Word: samphan
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Khmer Rouge Leader Khieu Samphan gives a rare interview...
...Western journalists, including TIME Hong Kong Bureau Chief Marsh Clark, to visit one of their bases inside Cambodia. Anxious to placate world opinion, which was appalled by reports that they had slaughtered millions of their own people, the Khmer Rouge produced their most articulate leader, President and Premier Khieu Samphan, 48. His confident if ominous message: the guerrillas will fight a protracted "people's war" against the Vietnamese and will eventually prevail...
...Samphan's doctoral dissertation, written in Paris in the 1950s, provided the ideological basis for some of the Khmer Rouge's most radical policies, like Cambodia's complete withdrawal from the world economy. Three months ago, he became supreme leader of Democratic Kampuchea (as the Khmer Rouge call Cambodia), succeeding notorious ex-Premier Pol Pot, who nonetheless still commands the guerrilla army. In a lengthy statement to visiting journalists, Samphan claimed that the Khmer Rouge has a fighting force of 50,000, a figure that is far in excess of most Western estimates. He called for unity...
...Samphan also granted an exclusive interview to Clark, the first he has given since he became Premier. Composed, almost serene, Samphan sat at a table beneath a canopy of banyan trees as silent Khmer Rouge soldiers stood guard. Excerpts from the 90-minute conversation...
...ideological guru of the Khmer Rouge was Cambodia's former head of state, Khieu Samphan. While a graduate student in France during the 1950s, he argued in a doctoral dissertation that a Communist-run Cambodia should "withdraw from the world economy and restructure the local economy on a self-centered basis" in order to purge the country of "decadent colonial influences." With unspeakable brutality, this deceptively bland program was imposed on "Democratic Kampuchea" (as that country was renamed) by the government of Premier Pol Pot after the Khmer Rouge took power. Phnom-Penh, once a placid, luxury-loving city...