35/ Vickery smokes out
Phnom Penh Post - Nov. 17-30, 1995 - p. 6
The Editor,
I am exceedingly gratified to have smoked out Stephen Heder as
a closet
supporter of Ben Kiernan as director of the Cambodian Genocide
Program. Some
activists in the Asian Studies milieu who otherwise admire Heder
were
troubled that his refusal to sign the petition for Kiernan meant
rejection
of Kiernan and agreement with Stephen Morris. We are all relieved
that this
was not the case, and each may speculate about Heder's motive
in refusing.
Perhaps he felt, as I also did, that the language of the petition
was too
pretentious, but I considered that the important matter was to
sign against
Morris.
I hope readers were not confused between the new Cambodian Genocide
Program
and the Cambodian Documentation Commission existing from the 1980s,
to which
Heder contributed as an advisor. Stephen Morris was also at one
time
associated with it, when it showed interest in using anti-DK [Democratic
Kampuchea] genocide arguments to discredit the PRK [People's Republic
of
Kampuchea]. This was one of the 'conspiracies' which I tried to
combat, and
which was finally discredited by Heder himself in 1990, as I earlier
noted.
I was also touched by Heder's concern to vouch for me as a loyal
red-blooded
American good ol' boy out on the front lines of spookdom against
the Evil
Empire. Let no more gossips call me a pinko Commie Marxist. In
the heat of
his emotion, however, Heder forgot that in my remarks about relationships
between US government employment and attitudes toward Cambodian
politics I
was joining him in criticism of Kiernan on that detail. Readers
can see this
again in his reference to the same matter in the final paragraph
of his
latest performance. I invite them also to compare his denial of
using
"thinly disguised" with his earlier review (p. 19).
I strongly defend. however, what I have written about the Amnesty
reports on
Cambodia in the 1980s. The excuse that in three consecutive years
the
release of special Amnesty reports on Cambodia to coincide with
UN votes or
a major NGO meeting was by chance simply will not wash I continue
to believe
that Amnesty was playing politics, and that its politics were
anti-PRK.
Amnesty's absolutist position, which Heder admits, and which I
consider
inappropriate in the circumstances, facilitates attacks on weak
countries
trying to recover from political disasters, but subject to Western
Great
Power disapproval, and Heder with Amnesty lost no opportunity
to take
advantage of that weakness.
Amnesty is still playing that kind of politics. They charged that
"international legal experts expressed the opinion that the
expulsion [of
Sam Rainsy from the National Assembly] was illegal", which
is in any case
hardly a question of human rights, (AI Index ASA 23/11/95, 22
June 1995),
yet the documentation they sent at my request fell short of demonstrating
that opinion.
I do not have time or space to guide readers through all of Heder's
emotionalism and irrelevancies, but with respect to what he said
I said
about alleged SoC [State of Cambodia] violence against FUNCINPEC
in 1992-93 they should look at a pamphlet by his UNTAC superior,
Timothy Carney, who rather lends support to my cynicism, and who
also there disavows Heder's
last UNTAC analysis, on the secession (see Whither Cambodia? Beyond
the
Election, by Timothy Carney and Tan Lian Choo, Singapore: Institute
of
Southeast Asian Studies, 1993, and my review of same in Journal
of Southeast
Asian Studies, September 1995).
Michael Vickery
Penang.
END