Son Sen - Democratic Kampuchea

Democratic Kampuchea

After the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh in April 1975, Son Sen was appointed Deputy Prime Minister with responsibility for Defense. Responsible for internal security, he also oversaw the Santebal - the Khmer Rouge secret police. As such he monitored the operations of the infamous S-21 prison at Tuol Sleng, and engaged actively in the design of its interrogation and torture procedures. Son Sen's role meant that he was particularly closely implicated in the many thousands of deaths that occurred in this period due to the arrest and execution of perceived enemies of the regime. His memoranda to his subordinate Kang Kek Iew, and notes taken during study sessions overseen by Sen for S-21 cadres, reveal his continued interest in history, deeply anti-Vietnamese views, and revolutionary zeal, along with a "schoolmasterish attention to detail". These were combined with a brutally ruthless streak; Sen was reputed to have once been so angry with Foreign Minister Ieng Sary that he unsuccessfully attempted to have him murdered.

The Party's paranoia with regard to security, and its obsessive secrecy, led many senior Khmer Rouge cadres to be identified in internal documents by pseudonyms or numbers: Son Sen was often referred to as "Khieu", and his wife as "At". He was also identified as "Brother 89" on letters and memoranda.

Sen's other main duties in this period involved reorganising the CPNLAF forces into a cohesive national army, the Revolutionary Army of Kampuchea. By 1977 - 78, he was overseeing an increasing series of clashes with Vietnamese forces along the border, as well as mounting a massive purge of Eastern Zone cadres considered to have Vietnamese links. As the ongoing war with the Vietnamese began to go increasingly badly for the Democratic Kampuchean forces, however, Sen began to fall under suspicion himself, and may well have become a victim of his own security apparatus if the 1979 Vietnamese invasion had not intervened. In particular, he had been implicated by the Party's internal security in several "traitorous" activities including the 1978 murder of the British academic Malcolm Caldwell.