“We don't want any Vietnamese in Cambodia…. We will be very glad if you solve our problem. We are not opposed to hot pursuit in uninhabited areas. You would be liberating us from the Viet Cong. For me only Cambodia counts. I want you to force the Viet Cong to leave Cambodia. In unpopulated areas, where there are not Cambodians,- such precise cases I would shut my eyes.”

— Norodom Sihanouk

Said to presidential emissary Chester Bowles (January 10, 1968), as quoted by Henry Kissinger (2003) Ending the Vietnam War: A History of America's Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War, page 67.

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Norodom Sihanouk 24

Cambodian King 1922–2012

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“I don't want Cambodia to be a carbon copy of the Philippines, Formosa, South Vietnam or South Korea. I don't even want a Cambodia which exports cameras like Japan. I want a decent Cambodia, a Cambodia like China. If that makes it a bit too austere, too bad. If this takes away the happiness I cultivated with my films and my songs, too bad. But, they say, there's the problem of individual freedom, freedom of thought. Yes, that's true. But where's the alternative? Nowhere. Let's use our common sense here: even if there was another solution, the Cambodian communists would never relenquish power.”

Norodom Sihanouk (1922–2012) Cambodian King

Said during his exile in Peking, as quoted by Oriana Fallaci (June 1973), Intervista con la Storia (sixth edition, 2011). page 128.
Interviews

“When I die, my only wish is that Cambodia remain Cambodia and belong to the West. It is over for communism, and I want to stress that.”

Pol Pot (1925–1998) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea

September 2018
Nate Thayer interview (1997)

“I'm not gonna help nobody get something my negroes don't have. If I'm gonna die, I'll die now right here fighting you, if I'm gonna die. You my enemy. My enemies are white people, not Viet Congs or Chinese or Japanese. You my opposer when I want freedom. You my opposer when I want justice. You my opposer when I want equality. You won't even stand up for me in America for my religious beliefs, and you want me to go somewhere and fight, but you won't even stand up for me here at home.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

Regarding the Vietnam War and conscription (1967) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeFMyrWlZ68

“Very much! China presents Vietnam with a very big problem. China is taking over Vietnam, from Cholon, where there are rich Chinese, to Haiphong. They are everywhere now with their product. My wife is from the North, people there resent China more than the South feared the Viet Cong. The Chinese are invaders — like any other foreigners — to fight. We must stop the Chinese. You know the dikes built on the Red River? If they break, what happens? A flood!”

Nguyen Khanh (1927–2013) South Vietnamese soldier

2000s, A Bag of Earth, A Promise To Keep (2005)

“I am asking the U. S. A and Great Britain if, just for once, they will kindly consider the problem of Cambodia from the viewpoint of the Khmers instead of that of the French… My people will tell you: 'We don't know what communist slavery means. But the slavery imposed by the French we know well, for we are now living under it. If we fight alongside the French against the Viet Minh and the Issaraks, we are simply strengthening the chains of that slavery…' [The problem is that] in Indochina, you are either a communist or a lackey of the French: there is no middle course. We are not allowed to hope for an independence like that of India or Pakistan within the British Commonwealth… The question is: Does French military power on its own have any chance of defeating communism in Indochina? To fight without having the autochtonous population on one's side makes no sense… What is at stake in this struggle, and what will determine its outcome, is the [native] population. The Viet Minh have understood that from the start. If we [who oppose communism] wish to have the population with us, we must… make [our country's] independence… real and unquestionable, so that [no one] will listen any more to the Viet Minh propaganda about 'liberation'… This is the whole problem. It is a political matter. It has nothing to do with the science of war… If France does not boldly face up to [this]… then one day, sooner or later, it will be forced to abdicate from Indochina.”

Norodom Sihanouk (1922–2012) Cambodian King

Secret memorandum drafted for the American and British legations (1953), as quoted in Philip Short (2004) Pol Pot: The History of a Nightmare, pages 92-93.
Speeches

“There's what we did wrong and what we did right. The mistake is that we did some things against the people — by us and also by the enemy — but the other side, as I told you, is that without our struggle there would be no Cambodia right now.”

Pol Pot (1925–1998) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea

Nate Thayer interview (1997)

“It is said that if the United States were to stop shooting and withdraw its troops from Vietnam, the Viet Cong would then stage a great purge of the people who we have been seeking to protect — have pledged to protect. First of all, so far they have been getting precious little protection from us. The Vietnamese people as human individuals have been shot at by the French, by us, by Communists, by guerrillas for years. Maybe, if only somebody would stop shooting at them that would be something to the good.”

A. J. Muste (1885–1967) Christian pacifist and civil rights activist

"Who Has the Spiritual Atom Bomb?" in Liberation (November 1965).

“Before, when I was covering the war in Vietnam and Cambodia, we used to have what I call the three Ss. You would shoot a story, you would script a story, which is to write it and then ship the story. And if you were in Cambodia you'd go to the airport and try to find a pigeon to carry it out for you. Someone who was leaving Cambodia to go to either Bangkok or Saigon or Hong Kong because there wasn't the satellite technology. There was no uplinks then. Today, the second major change is also in personnel. Today you have so much satellite coverage you can report live why from a battlefield. Before you were often there just by yourself. Now you're likely to be with 20 other reporters. I just think there's more people out there covering the same story and covering it in a very different way because of the technological advances.”

Ed Bradley (1941–2006) News correspondent

[Larry King, Interview with Ed Bradley, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0402/08/lkl.00.html, February 8, 2004, Larry King Live, CNN]

“… between Lon Nol's corrupt regime and the Khmers Rouges' serious one, the choice is obvious. If you were in my place, if you were a Cambodian patriot, if you were a Sihanouk who loves his own country more than anything else in the world, you'd say the same… It's only proper to congratulate the Cambodian communists and tell them: "Well done. You deserve power for ever, and no one must ever replace you. Not even Sihanouk. Sihanouk must not govern in your stead anymore, as he's been unable to do what you've achieved. He wanted to, and dreamed about it, but he couldn't do it. After all, Sihanouk counts for nothing. It's Cambodia that counts."”

Norodom Sihanouk (1922–2012) Cambodian King

Said during his exile in Peking, as quoted by Oriana Fallaci (June 1973), Intervista con la Storia (sixth edition, 2011). page 126.
Interviews

“In Cambodia, the Cambodian people, communists and patriots, have risen against the barbarous government of Pol Pot, which was nothing but a group of provocateurs in the service of the imperialist bourgeoisie and of the Chinese revisionists, in particular, which had as its aim to discredit the idea of socialism in the international arena… The anti-popular line of that regime is confirmed, also, by the fact that the Albanian embassy in the Cambodian capital, the embassy of a country which has given the people of Cambodia every possible aid, was kept isolated, indeed, encircled with barbed wire, as if it were in a concentration camp. The other embassies, too, were in a similar situation. The Albanian diplomats have seen with their own eyes that the Cambodian people were treated inhumanly by the clique of Pol Pot and Yeng Sari. Pnom Pen was turned into a deserted city, empty of people, where food was difficult to secure even for the diplomats, where no doctors or even aspirins could be found. We think that the people and patriots of Cambodia waited too long before overthrowing this clique which was completely linked with Beijing and in its service.”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

In regard to Cambodia, our Party and state have condemned the bloodthirsty activities of the Pol Pot clique, a tool of the Chinese social-imperialists. We hope that the Cambodian people will surmount the difficulties they are encountering as soon as possible and decide their own fate and future in complete freedom without any 'guardian'. (Selected Works Vol. VI, p. 419.)
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