Malcolm Caldwell

James Alexander Malcolm Caldwell (born September 27, 1931 in Stirling , Scotland , † December 23, 1978 in Phnom Penh , Democratic Kampuchea ) was a British university professor and political activist. He taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and focused on economic history in Southeast Asia. He was mostly popular with students and academic colleagues, but was criticized for his stance on the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia . Caldwell saw himself as a Maoist and defended the regime in his writings, which is why he was considered an apologist for Pol Pot's politics in the western world. Caldwell was one of the few Europeans from a non-socialist country who had direct contact with Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge. A few hours after a private interview with him, Caldwell was killed in Phnom Penh under circumstances that have not yet been clarified.

Professional background

University professor in London

After studying at the University of Edinburgh , Caldwell earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Nottingham in the 1950s . At the end of the decade he was considered a “young talent” and “future star of science”. Then he received in 1959 a lecturer at the University of London belonging SOAS (SOAS). His main focus was on economic history in Southeast Asia, and in this area he published on both modern history and the history of past ages. Several colleagues unanimously described him as friendly, collegial, educated and highly intelligent, but also as naive. According to the Guardian author Andrew Anthony, on his travels Caldwell was too carelessly prepared to take the propaganda of the country he was traveling at face value. Calling himself an anarcho- Maoist , Caldwell was fascinated by Mao's theory of peasant mobilization and praised the anti-anti-authoritarian parts of Mao's writings. Caldwell saw positive approaches in Kim Il-sung's Chuch'e ideology , which he supported in several writings.

Caldwell was a co-founder and associate editor of the Journal of Contemporary Asia . In 1978 he stood as a candidate for the Labor Party in local elections in London .

Positions in the Vietnam War

In addition to his work as a scientist, Caldwell was also active as an activist. Caldwell had been a critic of the United States and South Vietnam since the early stages of the Vietnam War . In 1966, he founded the Socialist Education Center in south London , which among other things organized fund-raising events, which were declared to raise funds for the Viet Cong to buy weapons .

Caldwell on the Khmer Rouge

Killing Fields in Kampuchea

Caldwell hailed the takeover of the Khmer Rouge in April 1975 as "unforgettable and historic" and endorsed their policies. He took the view that it was necessary to use the population as much as possible in agriculture. Caldwell saw the decision to evacuate Phnom Penh and to purify and re-educate the urban population "through hard work in rice paddies" as a milder measure than the executions that would have occurred without the evacuation. On the one hand, he considered reports of human rights violations and executions to be exaggerated and, like Noam Chomsky , on the other hand saw the displeasure of a disempowered social class that was not used to hard field work. The accusation of genocide directed against the Khmer Rouge was for him a "model example of projective behavior on the part of the US media." Many deaths were in fact due to malaria infections which could not have been treated as a result of the US economic blockade against Kampuchea.

For his apologetic remarks about the regime of the Khmer Rouge Caldwell was criticized many times. He was accused of uncritically taking over the propaganda publications of the Khmer Rouge.

Death in Phnom Penh

Kampuchea 1978: The environment

In the fall of 1978, the Khmer Rouge came to power three and a half years ago. During this time, with political and economic support from China , they had fundamentally reshaped the country, which was now called Democratic Kampuchea, according to a model known as Stone Age Communism. Between one and three million Cambodians had died from torture, forced labor or execution. Throughout 1978 there was tension with the communist ruled but Soviet-supported neighbor Vietnam , which repeatedly initiated or supported uprisings in the east of the country. At the end of 1978, Kampuchea was on the verge of a military conflict with Vietnam, which ultimately broke out on December 25, 1978.

Visit to Kampuchea

In this environment, in an unusual step for the otherwise isolated and conspiratorial regime, Caldwell received the invitation in October 1978 to visit Democratic Kampuchea. He was the only Briton allowed to travel to the country during the rule of the Khmer Rouge. In early December 1978 he arrived in Phnom Penh. He formed a group of three with Elizabeth Becker , a Washington Post journalist , and Richard Dudman of the St. Louis Post Dispatch , which were driven to various locations in the country for more than two weeks. Becker and Dudman were the first journalists from a non-socialist country to visit Democratic Kampuchea. The three participants agreed that during this time they were shown pure PR projects that hid real life in Kampuchea.

On December 22, 1978, the last day of their stay, Becker and Dudman were finally given an appointment to interview Pol Pot. Becker and Dudman's questions, including the human rights violations, the fate of Sihanouk and the identity of the members of the government, had been forwarded in advance. Pol Pot did not go into them in the conversation, but conducted a monologue of more than an hour in which he warned against the Vietnamese and thus claimed to have the support of the USA, Europe and Asia in the fight. Only then could Becker and Dudman ask some questions, but most of them were ignored. Becker later said that instead of an interview she had received a lecture and judged Pol Pot to be insane.

After the interview with Becker and Dudman was over, Pol Pot had a one-on-one interview with Caldwell about the content of which little is known. The only source for this is a statement by Pol Pot's interpreter, who later reported that the conversation had been friendly and had questions of agriculture and the economy as the subject. Becker and Dudman found that Caldwell was "euphoric" after talking to Pol Pot.

assassination

At around one o'clock on the morning of December 23, 1978, several shots were fired in the guest house where Caldwell, Becker, and Dudman were staying. Becker, who had left her room, was threatened by an armed person, another person shot Dudman. Both fled to their rooms. From his window Dudman saw several hooded people pacing back and forth in front of the guest house. After an hour, Becker and Dudman were informed by an unknown Cambodian that Caldwell had been shot. They found Caldwell dead in his room, with multiple gunshot wounds to his upper body. Next to him lay a Cambodian man unknown to them who had a gun in his hand and was also dead.

Becker and Dudman flew to Beijing on December 23, 1978 . They carried the coffin with Caldwell's body with them.

According to initial reports by the Khmer Rouge, Caldwell was shot dead by a lone perpetrator who committed suicide in Caldwell's room after the crime. In December 1978 there was an investigation into the matter in Phnom Penh. The Santebal Secret Service arrested several people who, after being tortured in S-21 Prison, confessed to murdering Caldwell "in order to discredit the party's policies" or to prevent them from being on friendly terms with the outside world. They stated that they acted on behalf of the company, but could not name their alleged clients. The alleged assassins were executed in January 1979. There are no known survivors on the Cambodian side.

Hypotheses about the background

Why Caldwell was murdered and who initiated the murder is still unclear. In the literature, there are widely divergent attempts at explanation, none of which can be substantiated.

• The British secret service assumed that the murder of Caldwell took place on the instructions of Pol Pot. The Asian researcher Ben Kiernan considers this possibility to be the most likely. The Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett also believes that Pol Pot was ordered to kill Caldwell. Afterwards, during the private conversation, there was a difference of opinion between Caldwell and Pol Pot, which was the trigger for the murder of the scientist. This is contradicted by the statements made by Pol Pot's interpreter about the course of the conversation and Elizabeth Becker's assessment that Caldwell was "euphoric" after his meeting with Pol Pot. According to Becker, however, it was soldiers from the Khmer Rouge regime who killed Caldwell.
• According to Pol Pot's biographer Philip Short, however, it is most likely that Caldwell was killed by a Vietnamese killer squad. In the run-up to the invasion of the Vietnamese army, which began two days later, the leadership in Hanoi had sought to cause unrest and to show the leadership of the Khmer Rouge the collapse of their security system.
• Pol Pot has circulated very different explanations over the years. According to one version, Caldwell was killed by Richard Dudman. Caldwell found out that Dudman was a CIA agent , and Dudman tried to prevent his exposure through the murder.

Works (selection)

• 1968: Hunger and the Bomb
• 1972: Cambodia in the Southeast Asian War , Monthly Review Press, ISBN 978-0-85345-171-6
• 1976: Thailand: Towards the Revolution , Race and Class Group, ISBN 978-0-85001-017-6
• 1977: Wealth of Some Nations: Introduction to the Study of Political Economy , Zed Books Ltd, ISBN 978-0-905762-01-2

literature

• Ben Kiernan : The Pol Pot Regime , Yale University Press, 3rd Edition 2008, ISBN 978-0-300-14434-5 , pp. 442-450.
• Philip Short: Pol Pot: The History of a Nightmare , John Murray, London 2004, ISBN 978-0-7195-6569-4

Remarks

1. ↑ The People's Republic of China supported the Khmer Rouge with arms and financial donations until autumn 1978, despite considerable doubts about their ability to govern. The reason for this is often seen in China's efforts to maintain Cambodia as a buffer state between itself and the Soviet-backed Vietnam. See Andrew Mertha: Brothers in Arms. Chinese Aid To The Khmer Rouge . Cornell University Press, 2014, ISBN 978-0-8014-5265-9 , pp. 8 ff.
2. ↑ The information on the number of victims varies greatly. Ben Kiernan ( The Pol Pot Regime , Yale University Press, 3rd edition 2008, ISBN 978-0-300-14434-5 , p. 459) assumes around 1.5 million victims; The US secret service CIA arrives at a similar figure. Elizabeth Becker gives the number of victims at around two million ( When the War was Over , p. 1), Craig Etcheson ( The Number: Quantifying Crimes Against Humanity in Cambodia ) estimates it at three million.
3. ↑ This opening of the regime was extraordinary. It contradicted the previous practice of foreclosure and secrecy. There is only speculation about the reasons for the invitation of Caldwell and the Western journalists who accompanied him. Pol Pot's biographer David Chandler thinks it possible that Pol Pot, in view of the impending confrontation with Vietnam, wanted to try this way to establish contact with the USA and to obtain their support in the fight against Vietnam, which is linked to the USSR. According to Chandler, it could have been an attempt to give Kampuchea a role similar to that of the Soviet-critical Romania of the Nicolae Ceaușescu era. See David P. Chandler, Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot (Revised Edition). Pp. 153-155.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Andrew Anthony: Lost in Cambodia. www.theguardian.com, January 10, 2010, accessed July 4, 2017 . 
2. ↑ Michael Ezra: Malcolm Caldwell: Pol Pot's Apologist. www.dissidentmagazine.org, 2009, accessed July 18, 2017 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Alec Gordon: Remembering Malcolm Caldwell (1931‐78). Journal of Contemporary Asia, Volume 39, 2009 - Issue 3. doi : 10.1080 / 00472330902944354 . Pp. 323-324
4. ↑ The Guardian, July 6, 1966, p. 10.
5. ↑ Malcolm Caldwell: Review: South-East Asia from Colonialism to Independence by JM Pluvier, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 1976, p. 206
6. ↑ ^{a b} Malcolm Caldwell: The Cambodian Defense . The Guardian August 5, 1978.
7. ↑ Daniel Bultmann: Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge: The creation of the perfect socialist . Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2017, ISBN 978-3-506-78692-0 , p. 16.
8. ^ Christian Semler : The travesty of the Khmer Rouge . TAZ of September 18, 2010, p. 23.
9. ↑ Ben Kiernan: The Pol Pot Regime , Yale University Press, 3rd edition 2008, ISBN 978-0-300-14434-5 , p. 445.
10. ^ ^{A b} Shaun Turton: Becker recounts Pol Pot meeting. phnompenhpost.com, February 10, 2015, accessed July 4, 2017 . 
11. ↑ ^{a b c d} BBC News - From Our Own Correspondent - Pol Pot remembered. In: news.bbc.co.uk. April 20, 1998. Retrieved July 19, 2017 . 
12. ↑ Ben Kiernan: The Pol Pot Regime , Yale University Press, 3rd edition 2008, ISBN 978-0-300-14434-5 , p. 448.
13. ^ ^{A b} John Simpson: We Chose to Speak of War and Strife: The World of the Foreign Correspondent , Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016, ISBN 978-1-4088-7225-3 , p. 237.
14. ↑ ^{a b c} Ben Kiernan: The Pol Pot Regime , Yale University Press, 3rd edition 2008, ISBN 978-0-300-14434-5 , p. 450.
15. ^ ^{A b} Philip Short: Pol Pot: The History of a Nightmare , John Murray, London 2004, ISBN 978-0-7195-6569-4 , pp. 394 f.