[Vietnamization] VIETNAM INVASION OF KAMPUCHEA (3 of 5, English) [ការឈ្លានពាន របស់យួន មកលើកម្ពុជា, ភាគ ៣/៥]

'Famine... The lion share of international aid was eventually shipped to the Vietnamese side.  But at the height of the crisis, it was the aid that flowed across the border that proved effective.  In addition to feeding the refugees on the spot, the camps were also used as a land bridge to funnel rice and other supplies back into the interior.  The Vietnamese had refused to allow the road or railway to be used, so everything depended on bullock carts, bicycles, and Kampucheans on foot.'

[Journalist to Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach] 'The military operation to overthrown Pol Pot took was completed in two weeks.  But the famine that followed lasted for two years.  Why was that?'

[Nguyen Co Thach] 'The food supply?  Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, we experienced war for 30 years....' [sounds familiar?]

[Journalist]  'But it was an immediate situation in 1979.  Life and death.  It turned out to be death for a lot of people.  Why didn't the Socialist bloc respond more quickly?'

[Author, journalist Alan Dawson] 'But I think the question of Vietnamese total withdrawal from Kampuchea simply does not arise.  If you study Vietnamese history for the last 700 years in Kampuchea, the way, the manner of conquest has always been to move people forward and follow up with the army.  This time is the other way around...'

[King Sihanouk]  'The approach of Heng Samrin is really terrible.  Because Heng Samrin is a puppet regime. ... More and more there Vietnamese settlers from Vietnam.  People become slaves of Moscow and of Hanoi.  The fate of Cambodia will be the same as the fate of South Vietnam.  That was south Cambodia.'

'As an army of occupation, the Vietnamese army were remarkably liberal at first. ... They were at pains to disguise their communism of any reminders of Pol Pot's rule.  But that was bound to change.  Once the famine receded, the outside world lost interest.  But the Vietnamese stayed on. ... They imposed conscription and forced labor.  Now there were political prisoners, secret arrests and torture. ... "thousands of their political opponents"'