Appendix 1: - Non Suon’s Biography of Pol Pot

Appendix 1:

Non Suon’s Biography of Pol Pot

What follows is drawn from the Tuol Sleng confession of the veteran CPK cadre Non Suon (alias Chey Suon), who was arrested in November 1976 while serving as Democratic Kampuchea’s secretary of agriculture. Non Suon, of peasant background, had joined the Khmer Issarak in the 1940s and was a prominent member of the Pracheachon movement after independence. Arrested by Sihanouk’s police in 1962, he was released in 1970 and immediately joined the maquis. In the course of composing his confession extracted at Tuol Sleng, Non Suon wrote biographical sketches of several high-ranking party members. The relative accuracy of the sketches suggests either that he had access to written autobiographies circulated in the upper reaches of the CPK or, as is more likely, that he had attended self-criticism sessions in the 1970s where high-ranking party cadre provided autobiographical data. Although Non Suon’s assessment of several other CPK figures, such as Ta Mok and Son Sen, are openly critical, his assessment of “Brother Secretary,” given the circumstances under which it was written, is unsurprisingly supportive, although it is clear that Non Suon saw little of him after his own imprisonment in the 1960s.

The sketch of Pol Pot was composed on November 21, 1976, almost a year before Pol Pot himself gave out any biographical data about himself. The translation is by Steve Heder.

The Brother Secretary of the party lived in a middle [peasant] family in Kompong Thom. He studied at a technical school in Kompong Cham province. In 1945, when the Japanese moved into the country (sic) he returned to live with his family in Kompong Thom. During 1949 or 1950—I can’t remember exactly—he went to further his education in France. In 1954 he returned from France and joined the armed struggle movement in the Eastern Zone. When the cease-fire took place in Cambodia he returned in late 1954 to live in Phnom Penh in order to carry out the clandestine struggle movement.

In Phnom Penh, Elder Brother fulfilled major party assignments, such as:

1. He assembled progressive elements in the city and enrolled them in the Democrat Party in order to attack and eliminate ... the Son Ngoc Thanhists the Democrat Party. The diehards fled and joined the Sangkum. Only the diehard Um Sim and some of his lapdogs remained and continued their activities [in support of Son Ngoc Thanh].

2. He made a crucial contribution to the Pracheachon Group’s formulation of its statutes and its immediate political program. He also made arrangements to insure that the Democrat Party did not put forth candidates for election in the same constituencies as the Pracheachon Group. As the balloting drew near there were exchanges of opinion with him about stepping aside in favor of the Democrat Party in those instances when the Democrat Party was stronger than the Pracheachon Group, so as to win in the overall tally against the Sangkum Reastr Niyum.