I have noticed there is a popular foodcourt chain in Singapore
named S21. S-21 is a former high school in Cambodia which was used
as the notorious Security Prison 21 (S-21) by the Khmer Rouge
communist regime from its rise to power in 1975 to its fall in
1979.
Cold war politics in south east asia, China, U.S,
Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and others all support Pol Pot to
fight against Soviet ally Vietnam:
"I do
not understand why some people want to remove Pol
Pot," said China's Deng Xiaoping in 1984. "It is
true that he made some mistakes in the past but
now he is leading
the fight against the Vietnamese aggressors."
China provided the Khmer Rouge forces with $100 million
in weapons per annum all through the 1980s, according to U.S.
intelligence.
A large Chinese arms shipment in mid-1990 violated a
previous promise to cut weapons deliveries to the Khmer Rouge in
return for Vietnam's September 1989 withdrawal from Cambodia.
For more than a decade, official Western support for
Deng Xiaoping's China spilled over into support for his protégé Pol
Pot. Former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski
recalls that in 1979, "I
encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot.
Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him, but China
could." According to Brzezinski, the United States "winked,
semi-publicly" at Chinese and Thai aid to the Khmer Rouge. At the
same time, international aid to the Khmer Rouge on the Thai border
was pushed through by United States officials.
In the 1980s, U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz opposed efforts
to investigate or indict the Khmer Rouge for genocide or other
crimes against humanity. Shultz described as
"stupid," Australian Foreign Minister Bill Hayden's 1983 efforts to
encourage dialogue over Cambodia, and in 1986 he declined to
support Hayden's proposal for an international tribunal. In 1985,
Shultz visited Thailand and warned against peace talks with
Vietnam, allegedly telling ASEAN "to be extremely cautious in
formulating peace proposals for Kampuchea because Vietnam might one
day accept them."
http://www.historyplace.com/pointsofview/kiernan.htm
Discussing Cambodia with Thailand's Foreign Minister,
Kissinger acknowledged that the Khmer Rouge were "murderous thugs"
but he wanted the Thais to tell the Cambodians "that
we will be friends with them":
Cambodia aligned with
China could be a "counterweight" to the real
adversary, North Vietnam.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB193/HAK-11-26-75.pdf
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB193/
Harry
Lee Kuan Yew talks about covert aid from Singapore to Pol
Pot:
CAMBODIA'S genocidal Khmer Rouge and allied
non-communist insurgents received massive sums of largely
covert aid from China, the United States, Singapore, Malaysia and
Thailand in the 1980s, according to Singapore Senior Minister Lee
Kuan Yew.
As much as US$1.3
billion was spent supporting rebel groups fighting Vietnamese and
allied Cambodian forces after Hanoi's invasion of Cambodia, which
toppled the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979.
"Our representative on the
Thai-Malaysian-Singaporean-US group that met in Bangkok to
co-ordinate our programme estimated that the United States
dispensed a total of about US$150 million in covert aid to the
non-communist groups," the former Singapore leader said in his
recently published memoirs...
Mr Lee estimated that Singapore spent about US$55
million, Malaysia about US$10 million and
Thailand a few million, in training, food and ammunition funnelled
to the insurgents, he said in his memoirs, From Third World to
First: The Singapore Story 1965-2000.
"This was dwarfed by China who spent some US$100 million
on the non-communist forces . . . and 10 times that amount on the
Khmer Rouge," he added.
He said China was the only country that had given direct
aid to the Khmer Rouge in the form of cash and weapons.
The Vietnamese army captured Phnom Penh on January 7,
1979, forcing dictator Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge regime - blamed
for the deaths of as many as 1.7 million people between 1975 and
1979 - into a jungle rebellion mainly in the border region with
Thailand.
Hanoi installed a puppet regime of Khmer Rouge defectors
that initially included current Prime Minister Hun Sen as foreign
minister. The last Vietnamese troops did not pull out of Cambodia
until a decade later...
http://www.singapore-window.org/sw00/001002sc.htm
Mr
Lee Kuan Yew estimated that Singapore spent about US$55
million,
