Buddhism in a Dark Age: Cambodian Monks under Pol Pot

Chapter Two: Buddhism and the Origins of Cambodian Communism

29 ChApter 2 Buddhism and the origins of Cambodian Communism The Formative Period From its foundation in 1930, the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) had made sporadic attempts to recruit the first generation of Cambodian anticolonialists . Two young monks appear to have been involved with the first known Khmer communist, Ben Krahom (Kiernan 1981, 161–162), and another shadowy figure, a twenty-eight-year-old Khmer from Kampuchea Krom called Thach Choeun, apparently joined the ICP in 1932. According to French intelligence sources, Thach Choeun had also been a monk in Takeo province. But while the authorities took an interest in early Chinese andVietnamese communist cells, they regarded the Khmer as “nonchalant and undisciplined ” (Morris 1999, 30), and this made it difficult for them to believe that the Khmer could be significant players. In the words of one intelligence officer, the Cambodians “know how to gather together only on pagoda feastdays and for funeral ceremonies, which are not very suitable for intrigues” (quoted in Kiernan 1981, 161). The first stirrings of an anticolonialist movement in the Umbrella War and its aftermath had, indeed, been largely devoid of leftist elements, but this would change when Son Ngoc Minh created the Unified Issarak Front (samāgam khmaer īssara, or UIF) in April 1950.1 Son Ngoc Minh (ca. 1910–1972) is also known asAchar Mean, but there has been some confusion about his true identity.2 The name is clearly a nom de guerre formed by combining “Son Ngoc Thanh” and “Ho Chi Minh.” It is plausible that he was born Pham Van Hua (Lamant 1987, 93, 95) somewhere in Kampuchea Krom, an ethnically Khmer region of the Mekong Delta, and that at some stage he was ordained there as a Buddhist monk. Eventually he 30 Chapter two moved to Phnom Penh and became a Pāli teacher at Wat Unnalom. The likelihood is that after the Umbrella War he fled to Kampong Chhnang province, where he made contact with an ICP cell in the neighboring Thai-controlled provinces of the northwest (Kiernan 1985, 44). Others claim that Son Ngoc Minh was admitted to the ICP around September 1945 and by March of the following year was commanding a Vietnamese-backed resistance group in Battambang that was designed to draw French forces away from southern Vietnam (Engelbert and Goscha 1995, 27n10, 33). In the late 1940s the ICP had decided to give its Khmer compatriots greater autonomy by dividing the country into four fields of operation. Son Ngoc Minh was moved to Kampot province, where, by the early 1950s, he took charge of the Southwestern Zone.3 The neighboring Southeastern Zone was commanded by fellow ex-monk Tou Samouth (ca. 1915–1962) (Short 2004, 39).4 Son ngoc Minh, in black (right). (Documentation Center of Cambodia) Buddhism and the origins of Cambodian Communism 31 One Vietnamese official likened Tou Samouth to “an old monk, sweet and good-natured” (“Recherche sur le Parti Cambodgien” n.d.), and another source described both Son Ngoc Minh and Tou Samouth as “influential ” and “authoritative” Buddhist monks (Khmer Peace Committee 1952, 13). Tou Samouth was also known as Achar Sok. Like Son Ngoc Minh, he came originally from Kampuchea Krom and had lived as a monk at Wat Unnalom, where he appears to have been well versed in Buddhist learning, had a reputation for oratory, and taught Pāli. He also became part of the circle of Mlle. Suzanne Karpelès, who was the French director of the Buddhist Institute, an important center of intellectual and political debate (Khing Hoc Dy 2006–2007). It seems that Tou Samouth fled Phnom Penh soon after Wat Unnalom was bombed by a US B-29 warplane on 7 February 1945, an event in which some twenty monks and bystanders were killed (Kiernan 1985, 48).5 phnom penh office of h. e. Chea Sot, with photographs of Son ngoc Minh (top left) and tou Samouth (top right), november 2004. 32 Chapter two On 17 April 1950 the Unified Issarak Front organized a first National Congress of the Khmer Resistance at Wat Kampong Som Loeu. Some two hundred individuals, around half of whom were Buddhist monks, attended.6 In June of the same year a political school named after hero and martyr Ven. Hem Chieu was also established in the southwest (Steinberg et al. 1959, 107). That the UIF viewed itself as contiguous with the earlier phase of monastic opposition to...