U.S.-backed looters rule
By John Spencer
1970John SpencerVietnam and Indochina Read the scan at ETOL (PDF) →Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.
IN A LAST report before his expulsion. from Phnom Penh by the Lon Nol regime, the Cambodian correspondent of the Belgrade newspaper 'Tanyang' has given a vivid description of the besieged capital:
The streets look like front lines, and districts resemble foreign legion camps.
Patrols and barbed-wire fences meet the passers-by everywhere, and one may run into frowning guards with rifles in their hands just about anywhere leaflets Khmer|Cambodian], Chinese and Vietnamese circulating the city say that the time for guerrilla actions in Phnom Penh has come . . .
Passers-by in Phnom Penh daily witness the acts of robbery carried out with special pleasure by the "hardened Saigon warriors" who smile into cameras of world TV reporters.
They, plunder everything -from the smallest transistorized radios to hotel refrigerators-carrying the things away by army lorries.
ISOLATION
The total isolation of the Lon Nol regime is reflected most-elaringly.in the-morale of its troops:
Saigon officers openly ridicule Gen. Lon Nol's army, claiming that it simpl admit that the "liberation" of cities from the guerrillas is, in fact, only entry after the guerrillas have left • . . The city [Phnom Penh] is practically cut off from the countryside and comings and •goings are possible only by air.
In this atmosphere of barbed wire and road blocks, uncertainty and skirmishes fear from court martial and robbery by Saigon troops, people in Phnom • Penh live and count the days, hoping and waiting.
And in this city, ruled by a clique of looters and CIA agents, the Soviet Embassy continues to function, business as usual. Union leaders hold the door open