What was the outside world's perspective on Cambodia, and how was the news reporting it, during the Khmer Rouges 4 year total reign over Kampuchea? Also, was there anyone who was able to live with special perks, or a type of "wealthy" life, or had special privileges, in Phnom Penh during this time?

The outside world’s perspective on Cambodia was clouded in uncertainty. After the last foreign journalists were eventually removed from the French Embassy in May '75, the western press would not have another first-hand glimpse within the secluded nation for another 3 and a half years. The ‘perspective’ on the country would depend on who you asked; naturally those sympathetic to socialist causes would use this uncertainty to portray the regime in a positive or at least neutral manner, while others would emphasise the reports of refugees and dire predictions of a communist bloodbath.

From the initial period of evacuating the population of Phnom Penh, western journalists were already fairly accurate in their assessment of what the regime might look like. Sydney Schanberg, one of the final group of foreigners evacuated from the country, wrote that 'The Khmer Rouge appear to be remaking Cambodian society in the peasant image ... foreigners and foreign aid are not wanted.' While William Safire wrote in the NY times on the 12th of May, 'to the Khmer Rouge, the elimination of classes requires that tens of thousands, perhaps many more, die by the wayside'. The CIA was also able to intercept transmissions indicating the murder of high ranking Lon Nol regime officials in the aftermath of the takeover.

Two months later William Goodfellow would write in the NY Times, 'the evacuation of Cambodia’s largest cities has been sensationalised in the western press as a 'death march'. In fact, it was a journey away from certain death by starvation ...' Here we see the role that this shroud which covered the country could play. No one could be sure of what had happened to the population of Phnom Penh as they walked out of the city. Estimates after the regime’s fall however would place the death toll in the tens of thousands.

In 1977, Francois Ponchaud would publish Cambodge année zéro (Cambodia: Year Zero). This book would be one of the first to draw heavily from refugee reports and paint a dark picture of Democratic Kampuchea, one most modern readers would recognise - but at the time was one which was not yet set in stone. Noam Chomsky would be one of those to publicly question the veracity of the reports contained within and seek to place any potential excess deaths back toward the damage caused by American bombing during the civil war. However the ‘perspective’ on Cambodia was certainly coming into a focus, no one truly knew what was going on in the country, but the notion that something quite terrible was happening behind closed doors was being popularised.

Yugoslav journalists who came to the nation in a friendly delegation wrote articles about what they were shown and what they saw. Naturally they were generally positive, speaking of a country that was rebuilding, that was doing better than the ‘west’ would have you believe. However, you can detect some notes of suspicion within their writing that perhaps the mission of the Cambodian communists was not being carried out in the best possible way. Slavko Slanic writing that 'there is quite a bit of irrational radicalism and a strange kind of puritanicalism' and that ‘human labour is not enough to rebuild the country as fast as neccessary ...'

Perhaps an interesting note to make about this ‘perspective’, from the time the country was closed in 1975, is to see how little it had changed in the years between western journalists leaving, and then their return in late 1978. Elizabeth Becker was part of a three-person group, along with Richard Dudman and Malcolm Caldwell. Becker would write that she was only able to speak to two people who had apparently been evacuees from Phnom Penh, they said that they had left 'voluntarily'. Becker closing one paragraph with, 'I did not see any signs of mass graves. For all that I saw and heard, I have no definitive answers to many troublesome questions.'

For me this highlights two things; first of all the general ‘perspective’ on the country was one of at least worry, either worrying that things were as bad as they were – or worried that they weren’t going as well as fellow socialists might hope. Becker alludes to mass graves as if she believed they could have been conspicuous – and these ‘troublesome questions’ as if everyone wanted to know if the Khmer Rouge were as terrible as many suspected. That would be how I would try and answer your question best, that from day one the view of many journalists was that something very bad could happen. No one really knew until it became quite clear toward the latter years and even the end of the regime.

In a recent interview I conducted with one of the ‘bigger’ historians of the subject, David Chandler said that his attitude “shifted from a ‘cant’ tell attitude’ ... to this must be pretty awful’, once the news kept leaking out of the country in late ’77. People knew a serious upheaval was taking place, they knew about the emptying of the cities, the focus on agrarian reforms and eventually they knew about Pol Pot, ‘Angkar’ and the growing conflict with Vietnam. And it seems to me that it was certainly reported on, by and large, like the country was in trouble. People had different reasons for doing this, the US was naturally in the game of condemning communism - particularly in a region it had recently had a messy divorce from. While those critical of US involvement in the region had reason to play down the potential for massive atrocities to suit their own agenda.

As for the second part of your question, yes. There were those who lived a different life in Phnom Penh. During the regime’s time in power there were probably around 50,000 or so people in the still very empty city. Some had technical jobs, some were diplomats. Diplomats from other countries were able to go to speciality stores that were opened-up to service them, they could buy bread, fruit, whiskey - even beer and cognac. As for someone living a particularly ‘privileged’ lifestyle, well an easy example would be Norodom Sihanouk. He would complain in one of his diaries that there was not enough rum to make flambé bananas. Which goes a little way in explaining what kind of things he was still used to despite his country’s agrarian revolution. He was essentially under house arrest during this time however and probably constantly fearing of his death – and his family members- so we shouldn’t be too hard on him. After all he did used to be a King so, I’m sure he was used to the finer things.