Human Rights Watch | January 2015 Report
See also:
See also:
Indochina Report April-June 1988: DAILY LIFE IN CAMBODIA: A Personal Account (by Dr. Esmeralda Luciolli)
III. Hun Sen and the “K5” Forced Labor Program
In response to Khmer Rouge attacks, the Vietnamese army
invaded Cambodia on December 25, 1978. It reached Phnom Penh on January 7, 1979,
then chased the Khmer Rouge to the Thai border.
Vietnam installed a new government, mixing Hanoi-trained
communists with former Khmer Rouge officers to run the People’s Republic
of Kampuchea (PRK). The former group included Pen Sovann, who was named the prime
minister. Among the latter group was an obscure, 26-year-old named Hun Sen, who
became the world’s youngest foreign minister. Pen Sovann soon fell afoul
of Hanoi and was arrested. He was replaced by Chan Si, who died in office in December
1984. Hanoi, impressed with the capacity and loyalty of the young foreign
minister, promoted Hun Sen to the post of PRK prime minister on January 14,
1985.[120]
The PRK was a police state, with virtually no civil or
political freedoms. Among the many serious human rights abuses of its rule, few
were more notorious than the Kế
hoạch năm or K5 plan. K5 involved the mass mobilization of Cambodian
civilians for labor on the Cambodia-Thai border and which led to the deaths of many
thousands of Cambodians from disease and landmines.
Planned in early 1983 by the Vietnamese military command for
Cambodia, K5 called for a Vietnamese offensive assisted by PRK troops to attack
remnant Pol Pot-led Khmer Rouge and other anti-Vietnamese and anti-PRK armed
forces based along the Cambodia-Thailand border in late 1984 [T2P: when Chan Si was murdered in office for his refusal to implement], at the start of
the dry season. This was to be followed by construction of defensive fortifications
and obstacles on the Cambodia side of the border, including the planting of
large numbers of landmines. The goal was to prevent Pol Pot-led Khmer Rouge and
other guerrillas from reestablishing their bases and infiltrating Cambodia from
Thailand. According to Sin Sen, who became deputy minister of interior of the
PRK in 1987 and was a senior member of the security forces until his
involvement in a coup attempt in 1994, “The plan was to build a wall like
the Berlin Wall along the Thai border.”[121]
Vietnamese planners decided it would be necessary “to
mobilize a very large force from all classes of the [Cambodian] civilian
population” from “the entire nation” as labor to construct this
defensive “wall.” The plan was for the PRK “military,
government, and Party headquarters and agencies from the national down to the
local level to direct, organize, and manage” the construction project,
doing so with Vietnamese military assistance.[122]
The military offensive went off successfully, after which
the construction work began. The overwhelming bulk of this was carried out by the
civilian population as planned. However, establishing a comprehensive effective
line of fortifications and obstacles proved considerably more difficult than
expected, especially in many areas of rugged terrain, forest and jungle. The
work continued on a significant scale for a number of years but was never fully
completed.[123]
Le Duc Tho, the senior Vietnamese official in charge of
Cambodia, appears to have introduced the K5 construction plan to top PRK
authorities, including its Revolutionary People’s Party of Kampuchea
(RPPK), government and armed forces in January 1984. The RPPK Politburo
approved a final version in July 1984. It was carried out under the overall
authority of the RPPK Secretariat and PRK Council of Ministers, via a K5
Leadership Committee comprising RPPK, government and military officials. This
committee was originally headed by the chairman of the PRK Council of Ministers,
Prime Minister Chan Si, until his death in December 1984.
According to Sin Sen, “K5 was led by Hun Sen. He was
assigned this responsibility by Vietnam.”[124]
Day-to-day responsibility for K5 matters was reportedly invested in a
subordinate standing vice-chairman, who led a K5 Standing Committee. This was originally
Soy Keo, a vice-minister of national defense who was also concurrently chairman
of the armed forces General Staff. In late 1985, Hun Sen replaced him with Nhim
Vanda, a close confidante and the deputy minister of planning, who later became
a deputy minister of defense.[125]
Meanwhile, the Council of Ministers assigned provinces,
municipalities and government ministries and departments to provide labor for
K5 projects, according to a quota system.[126] Vietnamese
and official PRK sources portray the project as arduous but legal and not
entailing large-scale fatalities, especially after the authorities corrected
initial shortcomings in the care of the labor force.[127]
Soy Keo reported to the all-RPPK National Assembly in July 1985 on the
implementation of the plan, noting that 90,362 ordinary people were involved in
the construction work. He argued that their deployment was pursuant to article
9 of the PRK Constitution, which stated that “the people as a whole
participate in national defense.”[128] In
subsequent years, according to official statistics, the number of ordinary
people deployed as workers dropped: 20,034 in 1986-1987 and 8,814 the next year.
However, they were supplemented throughout by militia, cadre and state
employees. Including these would bring the 1986-87 figures to 38,388 and that
of the following year to 13,316.[129]
In theory, workers were supposed to be paid for their
efforts, but most went involuntarily and were used as forced labor, especially
after many in the first waves came back ill, especially with malaria, with
perhaps 5 to 10 percent dying. If official figures were accurate, this would
suggest a death toll from malaria of about 1,000 persons.[130]
A report from deputy health minister Chhea Thang and others who inspected K5
worksites in December 1985 blamed the malaria fatalities on bad weather that
left the workers with little food and low resistance. The report also blamed
the laborers for their own poor hygiene.
Subsequent reports from the Ministry of Health and the
Council of Ministers and to the latter maintained that counter-measures had
greatly reduced the death toll.[131] Other sources
tell a very different story, describing a highly coercive deployment of a much
larger work force and many more deaths, against which the authorities evidently
took few effective measures. Each province, district, commune and village in
the PRK was assigned a quota of “volunteers” to fill. Force and
threats were used to make reluctant civilians participate.
According to Kong Korm, the deputy minister of foreign
affairs at the start of K5 and later appointed minister of foreign affairs in
1987, “Civilians from Svay Rieng, Prey Veng, Kandal and youth were mobilized
to clear the border area. Students were forcibly conscripted into the military.
Soldiers tore up student cards and inducted them.… But one group, including
Hun Sen’s friends and subordinates, was sent to Battambang instead of the
border.”[132]
Overall, one million or more Cambodians may have been sent
to the border. Working conditions were miserable, particularly in the early
stages. Virtually no shelter was provided, so workers had to sleep on mats,
tarps or on the ground. Food was in short supply. One account cited an alleged
internal Vietnamese army report finding that the living conditions of the K5 workers
were miserable: “The main course is salt and less than thirty grams of
dried fish if there is any, for a worker, and they are ill for a lack of
medicines. The report cited corruption as the major reason for the conditions.”[133]
People taken from areas of the country with little or no malaria
were dumped into a place with some of the most virulent strains of malaria in
the world. Only 30-40 percent of the workers were given mosquito nets. There
was no medicine and Cambodia’s hospitals were not equipped to deal with
an epidemic. In fact several thousand, possibly tens of thousands, died of
disease. Thousands more died and were disabled by landmines. The Thai-Cambodia border
area had been heavily mined over the years by all of the armed forces active
there. K5 workers were compelled to clear mine-infested areas without any
previous training in spotting mines.
According to Bartu, “under the guise of removing
potential refuge for the resistance, the programme enabled massive
deforestation in Cambodia. In Takeo province for example much of the damage to
the forests began in the early eighties when about 2000 hectares of trees were
cleared.”[134]
According to Sin Sen, “Corruption was massive. If 10 tents were provided,
only one would arrive.”[135]
Another troubling aspect of K5 labor conscription, according
to academic research, is that it hit disproportionately at Cambodia’s ethnic
Chinese communities, which were then the target of official PRK discrimination
and died in large numbers at K5 border worksites. This situation reportedly
opened up opportunities for extortion by PRK cadre, or at least invited bribes
from Chinese who paid to have poor Khmer sent to the border in their place. Some
of those who paid bribes claim that they were then arrested for having done so.[136]
Bribery was not confined to the Chinese community, however, as Cambodians of
all ethnicities have described paying bribes to avoid a deadly assignment.
Senior ruling party officials interviewed indicate that Hun
Sen and other senior PRK officials were aware that the situation was much worse
than that described in the official reports mentioned above, but that they
decided to downplay the seriousness of the situation and blamed it on “enemy
subversion” of the project.No
dissent within the party on the issue was allowed.[137]
By the end of the program, Nhim Vanda had become a notorious
and unpopular figure in Cambodia, with both he and Hun Sen blamed by many
Cambodians for engaging in forced labor that led to the deaths and disability
of thousands. Senior Cambodian officials claimed that K5 almost led to the
collapse of the PRK regime.[138] The K5
program was “extremely unpopular” in Cambodia, said Sin Sen.
“No one supported it. Only the poor were sent to K5. When they went there
they were sure they would die.”[139] One
expert concluded that “the K-5 plan probably alienated the Vietnamese
from the Khmer people more than any other programme.”[140]
[120] Phnom Penh Domestic Radio Service, January 14, 1985, FBISDRAP,
January 14, 1985.
[121] Brad
Adams interview with Sin Sen, February 10, 2000, Phnom Penh.
[122] Nguyễn Văn Hồng, Cuộc chiến tranh bắt buộc: hồi ức (The Unwanted War: A Memoir) (Ho Chi Minh: Nha Xuat Ban Tre, 2004), pp.169-180; Lịch Sử Cục Tác Chiến
1945-2000 (History
of the Combat Operations Department 1945-2000) (2005), posted on
http://www.quansuvn.net/ at
http://www.quansuvn.net/index.php?topic=82.165
[123] Nguyễn Văn Hồng, Unwanted War, pp.194-205.
[124] Brad
Adams interview with Sin Sen, February 10, 2000, Phnom Penh.
[125] Nhim Vanda was promoted to deputy minister of defense and chief of logistics in January
1989. He was vice-chairman of the 11-man Khmer-Thai
Economic Commission, established and chaired by Defense Minister Tie Banh, in February 1989. In
November 1990 he was appointed to the Cambodian
Politburo as vice trade minister and in January 1991
he was made trade minister.
[126]
Margaret Slocomb, “The K5 Gamble: National Defence and Nation Building
under the People’s Republic of Kampuchea,” Journal of Southeast
Asian Studies (Vol.32, No.2: June 2001), p.201.
[127] Nguyễn Văn Hồng, Unwanted War, pp.194-205.
[128] Slocomb,
“K5”, pp.198-199.
[129] Ibid., p.201.
[130] Ibid., pp.201-203.
[131] Ibid., pp.203-204.
[132] Brad
Adams interview with Kong Korm, November 23, 1999, Phnom Penh.
[133] Peter
Bartu, “The Fifth Faction: The United Nations in Cambodia
1991-1993” (PhD diss., Monash University, 1998).
[134] Mang Channo 'Forest Given to Local Government' Phnom Penh Post, January 13-26, 1995 p.5, Channo reports
that by 1995 only four percent of the province was covered by forest.
[135] Brad
Adams interview with Sin Sen, February 10, 2000, Phnom Penh.
[136] Sambath Chan, “The Chinese Minority in Cambodia: Identity
Construction a Contestation” (Montreal: Concordia University M.A.
Thesis, March 2005), pp.59-68.
[137] Brad
Adams interviews with senior government and party officials, names
withheld.
[138] Brad
Adams interviews with senior government and party officials, names withheld.
[139] Brad
Adams interview with Sin Sen, February 10, 2000, Phnom Penh.
[140] Peter
Bartu, “The Fifth Faction: The United Nations in Cambodia 1991-1993”
(PhD diss., Monash University, 1998), p.32.
