A Khmer Curtain Descends

Fighting from the jungle redoubts against the Lon Nol government in Phnom-Penh, Cambodia's Khmer Rouge insurgents were shrouded in mystery. If anything, the mystery intensified last week as the rebels dropped what might be called a Khmer curtain over the country they had just conquered. As of week's end, ten days after the fall of Phnom-Penh, very little was known about the composition of the new regime, how it was running the war-torn state or what had become of the defeated leaders who were unable to escape. With normal lines of communication severed, roads blocked and airports closed, Cambodia was almost completely cut off.

One of the rare public statements by a Khmer Rouge leader came from Khieu Samphan, commander of the rebel army and one of the insurgents' top political leaders. In a broadcast carried by Phnom-Penh radio, Samphan warned that the country was "still facing a big menace." He did not elaborate, but an earlier broadcast indicated that troops loyal to the former government were holding out in remote provinces.

Samphan also may have been referring to the problem of feeding an estimated 1.3 million refugees who were still believed to be crowding the capital. Asked an expert in Bangkok: "How can the 60,000 Khmer Rouge troops handle the 2 million people packed into Phnom-Penh?"

The French embassy compound in Phnom-Penh, staffed only by a vice consul and a cipher clerk, was jammed with about 400 French citizens, some 400 Cambodians who claim French blood and about two dozen foreign journalists and representatives of international organizations. According to officials in Paris, sanitary conditions within the refuge were poor, intestinal disease was rife and there were serious shortages of food, water and medicine.

The fate of some key members of the Lon Nol regime remained unclear. Former Premiers Long Boret and Sirik Matak were assumed to have been arrested by the Communists, along with several hundred lower-level officials who first found refuge in the French embassy compound but were later forced to leave. Some of these may already be dead; a radio broadcast from inside Cambodia told of beheadings, but could not be confirmed. Political trials in Phnom-Penh were said to be beginning.

Both Long Boret and Sirik Matak were on the old Khmer Rouge list of "seven traitors" slated for death. Four others, including President Lon Nol (see story below), escaped before the capital fell. Another, former Premier In Tarn, waited until it was almost too late, and finally fled across the border into Thailand, with Communist troops firing at him. Also in Thailand are approximately 1,000 other Cambodian refugees; most are expected to stay on or to settle permanently in the U.S. and France.

The only peephole view of life under the Khmer Rouge was at the Thai border opposite Cambodia. While life on the Cambodian side seemed normal at the start of the week--except for the presence of armed Communist soldiers in pajama-like uniforms--by week's end refugees were reporting that the Khmer Rouge had ordered the inhabitants of several towns to evacuate or risk being killed. Dozens of civilians were said to have been killed trying to flee, and other reports told of scattered executions.

Among the Cambodians who fled into Thailand, many were soldiers who brought along their U.S.-made equipment. Khmer Rouge demands that the equipment be returned--including armored personnel carriers and aircraft--led to tension between Thai and Communist border guards. The Thai government sent 1,000 troops to reinforce 4,000 border police in a determined effort to stem the continued inflow of Cambodian refugees.

At week's end the new leaders began a three-day victory celebration and a week of mourning for those killed in the war. But no solid clues were forthcoming about future plans or policies. About all that filtered through the curtain was a statement by Samphan in his radio address that "we will be neutral and nonaligned." Yet Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge's figurehead leader, said in Peking that within a year or two most of Southeast Asia would be Communist or proCommunist, and that one of the Khmer Rouge's first tasks must be to "remove all pro-free world elements."

Cambodia's former President Lon Nol reached Hawaii three weeks ago. He and members of his retinue are fixing to stay. He is negotiating to buy a $103,000 two-story, four-bedroom home in Mariner's Cove (pop. 400), an upper-middle-class suburb east of Honolulu. He should have no trouble paying off a mortgage. On the day before he left his homeland, the National Bank of Cambodia reportedly asked Manhattan's Irving Trust Co., with which it has a correspondent relationship, to pay $1 million to the order of Lon Nol. Irving Trust has neither confirmed nor denied the allegation.

Some residents of Mariner's Cove see the newcomer as an embodiment of the U.S.'s distasteful Indochina policies and would rather he settled elsewhere. Others fear that he may draw crowds of tourists and "disruptive curiosity seekers." According to his real estate agent, the exiled President chose the small community merely because he wants his children to "mix with the kids and become regular Americans." He seems to mean it. At week's end Lon Nol borrowed a neighbor's ladder and put new netting on the driveway basketball hoop that comes with the house.

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