Volume 40, Number 14 · August 12, 1993
A New Cambodia
By William Shawcross
Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot
by David P. Chandler
Westview Press, 254 pp., $24.95
The subject of David Chandler's excellent and absorbing biography is, one may suppose, even now, in his secret headquarters in western Cambodia or in the carefully guarded house provided him by the Thai military inside Thailand, contemplating how the Khmer Rouge should now react to its disastrous defeat in the remarkable Cambodian election that took place in May under UN supervision. Until the very last moment before the elections began, the Khmer Rouge were widely expected to disrupt the polling and punish whoever voted. In some provinces people were warned that 'to vote is to commit suicide.' Elsewhere they were threatened that they would find their houses burned down when they returned from the polls. At the same time, the former members of the Khmer Rouge who controlled the Hun Sen regime in Phnom Penh were warning the population that they had to vote—and vote for them. Throughout the country they ordered peasants to go to the polling stations, and often took them there in trucks. They were confident that they would win.
Review, 5628 words
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