Friends of Kampuchea
A number of quotes from staunch supporters of the Khmer Rouge
“Whoever controls the military has the political power. I am now fighting together with the
Cambodian Communists for a common cause. I have no ambition regarding the future.
I think that power ought to belong to them in the future. They are the young people and
should rightfully be in power…The Communists are in command of everything. I replied
that those who were formerly Sihanoukists have now gone to support Lon Nol and Nixon,
and they are no longer with me. Hence it is completely normal for the Communists to be
in power in an independent Cambodia in the future which rejects any foreign rule…The
political power lies not in the hands of a prince like myself but in the hands of the people.
We put real democracy into practice. We struggle against imperialism and all evil forces.
The Cambodian Communists are in complete agreement with Chairman Mao’s views and
have agreed to preserve the two-thousand-year-old orthodox form of the kingdom.”
– Prince Sihanouk, 1974
“Your cause will succeed, but I am a little doubtful…We too had no tanks, no navy and no air force
in the past. We only had land forces. We fought for 18 years, with Chiang Kai-Shek, and with the
Japanese. Later on we fought again after the peace (of World War II). Then we fought the Americans
in Korea, but we sent the volunteer army. We fought for 25 years in total…Later on Chiang Kai-
Shek started killing people! There were 50 thousand of us and he killed 10 to 20 thousand. The
revolution failed. Some people defected to Chiang Kai-Shek and some became too pessimistic
to continue. We were left with about 10 thousand people. In the end, we defeated Chiang Kai-Shek,
the Japanese and the Americans. The October Revolution gave me an education. It was mainly
because Chiang Kai-Shek was killing people. I was a primary school teacher, a head of the kids.
I had never thought about fighting a war in the mountains! As Chiang Kai-Shek was killing people,
it was impossible to stay in the city and we were forced to go up to Mount Liang. I fought for ten
years and accumulated some experience…So I am 81 this year, and I have spent more than 20
years fighting. About fighting the wars, you’ll learn it once you start. You won’t understand it if
you don’t fight. It’s mainly about the experience, fighting on your own. Thus you have to form
a fist, and be able to attack and occupy Phnom Penh, and the big cities. I reckon you’d need about
100 thousand troops, and you have to clench your hand into a fist.”
– Chairman Mao, 1974
“The Kampuchean revolution will appear more and more clearly as one of the most
significant early indications of the great and necessary change beginning to convulse
the world in the later 20th century and shifting from a disaster-bound course to one
holding out the promise of a better future for all. My argument is that the Kampuch
-ean experiment is a very valid and valuable experiment. It would be a great pity
if the Kampuchean experiment were to be extinguished by the intervention of a
power which, while it may have a more powerful army, has a less powerful and
less valid revolutionary model to offer the people of the Third World.”
– Malcolm Caldwell, 1978
“We approve of what you do. Much of your experience is better than ours. China is not qualified
to criticize you. We committed errors of the political lines for ten times in fifty years…and can only
agree with you. You are basically correct. I am not sure whether you have any shortcoming. There
are bound to some and you’ll rectify by yourself…in the next 50 or 100 years, there will still be
a struggle between these two lines. In the next ten thousand years, there will still be a struggle
between the two. Even when Communism is achieved, there will still be a struggle between
the two. Otherwise we aren’t Marxists. The unity of opposites, If we only talk about one, that’s
metaphysics; if we talk about two, then it’s the unity of opposites. I believe in what Marx and
Lenin said. The road is winding. Lenin’s Soviet Union changed under Khrushchev and Brezh
-nev. In the future, it will still return to Lenin’s path. The same goes for China. It could become
revisionist in the future, but eventually it will follow the path set by Marx and Lenin. We are
now a capitalist country without capitalists, as said by Lenin. That’s what we are like right
now and this will continue for many years before we achieve Communism.”
– Chairman Mao, 1975
