Ieng Sary claps while inspecting railway tracks in Takeo province, 1977: he was the first Khmer Rouge leader to defect
Cambodian politician who with Pol Pot presided over the Khmer Rouge terror in which a million perished
Ieng Sary was “Brother Number Three” and foreign minister in the Khmer Rouge regime that ruled Cambodia under its brutal leader Pol Pot between 1975 and 1979, inflicting huge misery on the country’s people through its policies of social engineering and political oppression that led, effectively, to genocide.
The regime’s misguided attempt to reform Cambodia’s agriculture, and its insistence on self-sufficiency, led to thousands of deaths through starvation and overwork, while arbitrary restrictions on the supply of medicines led to thousands more deaths from treatable diseases such as malaria. Untold numbers died through torture and executions as the Khmer Rouge sought to purge Cambodia of what it regarded as subversive elements.
At the end of four years of Khmer Rouge terror and misrule, during which the country came to be known as the “Killing Fields”, more than a million of Cambodia’s population had perished and the nation had descended to the bottom of the league of Third World poverty.
Ieng Sary, whose wife and Pol Pot’s wife were sisters, also served as Deputy Prime Minister in the Khmer Rouge regime, which called itself Democratic Kampuchea (DK). He fled to Thailand in the face of a Vietnamese invasion in 1979, moved back into northwestern Cambodia in the early 1990s and accepted an amnesty from the Phnom Penh government in 1996. In 2007 he and his wife, Ieng Thirith, were arrested and charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity by a joint United Nations-Cambodian tribunal. In December 2009 the tribual charged him with genocide for his involvement in the murder of Vietnamese and Muslim minorities in Cambodia. He died before the conclusion of the case.
Noted throughout his career for his quick intelligence and his arrogant demeanour, Ieng Sary, unlike Pol Pot, was never admired by his subordinates. He was the only member of the DK leadership to become personally wealthy and he was the first to defect to the Phnom Penh government.
Ieng Sary was born into a KhmerVietnamese peasant family in the French colony of Cochin China, now part of Vietnam, in 1925. Because of his scholastic abilities, he went to Phnom Penh in 1942 to complete his education. At the Lycée Sisowath he took part in mildly anti-French activities. In 1950 the semi-independent Cambodian government awarded him a scholarship to study in Paris, where he remained for seven years and joined the French Communist Party, alongside several fellow students, including the apparently lacklustre Saloth Sar (Pol Pot, obituary April 17, 1998). His political activities came to the attention of the Cambodian authorities, who withdrew his scholarship in 1953. In the same year, he married a fellow student, Khieu Thirith, who shared his radical views.
When he returned to Cambodia in 1957, Ieng Sary taught in a private school with Saloth Sar and worked for the minuscule Communist movement. He joined the central committee of the Workers Party of Kampuchea (WPK) at its founding congress in 1960. Three years later, fearing arrest, he fled the capital with Saloth Sar and took refuge in a Vietnamese Communist military camp on the Vietnamese-Cambodian border. They were soon joined by other high-ranking members of the WPK. In 1966 the leadership shifted to a base in northeastern Cambodia where they gained recruits and plotted to come to power. The WPK renamed itself the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) at this time and in 1968 embarked on armed struggle against the Phnom Penh authorities. Cambodia’s mercurial leader, Prince Norodom Sihanouk (obituary, October 16, 2012), who had pursued a policy of befriending Communist regimes while suppressing Communism at home, was taken aback by the rebels, whom he derisively called “Khmers Rouges”, but before 1970 the Khmer Rouge made little military headway. The prospect of civil war, Cambodia’s deteriorating economy and the Prince’s erratic behaviour led the Khmer elite to overthrow him in a bloodless coup in March 1970, when Sihanouk was overseas. The new ruler, General Lon Nol, allied himself with the United States.
The coup allowed the CPK to ally its insignificant forces with the battle-hardened Vietnamese Communists, who provided invaluable weaponry and training, ostensibly in a combined effort to return Sihanouk to power. By the end of 1971, after several Vietnamese victories over the Lon Nol army, the Khmer Rouge gained thousands of recruits, primarily in rural areas.
The Prince, meanwhile, had taken up residence in Beijing as head of a government in exile. Because he was so unpredictable, the CPK leadership sent Ieng Sary to Beijing in 1971 to monitor him. The two men despised each other, but maintained formal relations, and Ieng Sary accompanied Sihanouk on his brief visit to the “liberated zones” of Cambodia in 1973. Two years later, the Khmer Rouge forces victoriously occupied Phnom Penh.
Ieng Sary, who had played no part in the Khmer Rouge military victory, retained the confidence of Pol Pot and became the new regime’s minister of foreign affairs, while retaining his place on the CPK Central Committee. He frequently travelled abroad to the UN and elsewhere, proclaiming the “independence mastery” of the Cambodian revolution, monitoring Cambodian diplomats and luring expatriate Khmers home, where many of them were summarily put to death. In the closing months of the regime, after warfare had broken out with Vietnam, he sought to open up DK by encouraging foreign visitors and establishing diplomatic relations with several non-Communist countries. These efforts were too late to save the regime from the massive Vietnamese invasion in December 1978. Ieng Sary fled the country with Pol Pot. He arrived at the Thai border without any shoes. Soon afterwards the two men flew to Beijing and to a polite, regretful meeting with Deng Hsiao Ping.
DK military forces who had fled to Thailand soon regained their strength, receiving ample support from the Chinese and the Thailand.
Meanwhile, in Phnom Penh a proVietnamese regime calling itself the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) put Pol Pot and Ieng Sary on trial in absentia in August 1979, charging them with genocide. They were condemned to death. The Khmer Rouge in Thailand, for their part, claimed to have abandoned Marxism-Leninism, but Pol Pot remained in command and his forces fought vigorously against the PRK and its Vietnamese allies throughout the 1980s.
In 1989-90, after the Vietnamese withdrew from Cambodia, DK forces took possession of swathes of Cambodian territory adjacent to Thailand. Ieng Sary and several thousand followers moved into the gem-producing region of Pailin, and carried out a profitable trade in gems and timber with the Thai. The Khmer Rouge movement was marginalised by the UN-sponsored national elections in Cambodia in 1993 and while the civil war sputtered on for a few years, Ieng Sary’s followers did little fighting and Ieng Sary, it seems, had decided that the revolutionary era was over. He defected to Phnom Penh with several thousand followers in 1996.
Until his arrest, Ieng Sary and his family divided their time between Pailin, where several relatives held administrative positions, and Phnom Penh, where he built a sumptuous villa for himself. He used his chronic poor health to defer efforts to bring him to trial. He never expressed any regrets or admitted the slightest culpability for his activities in the DK era.
Ieng Sary, Cambodian politician, was born on October 24, 1925. He died on March 14, 2013, aged 87
Âìåñòå ñ ãîëëàíäñêèì Ñîïðîòèâëåíèåì ó÷àñòâîâàë â ñïàñåíèè ñáèòûõ ë¸ò÷èêîâ ñîþçíèêîâ
Wartime glider pilot who worked with the Dutch resistance to rescue Allied troops
Towed by an RAF Stirling bomber, Staff-Sergeant Alan Kettley piloted his Horsa glider carrying six men of the 2nd South Staffordshire Regiment with a jeep and trailer of ammunition to Arnhem on September 17, 1944. He put down in the right place with no casualties. He and most of G Squadron of the Glider Pilot Regiment landed north of the railway to Arnhem five miles west of the two target bridges over the Lower Rhine. His primary task in Operation Market Garden was accomplished, but his personal battle had scarcely begun.
The 1st Air-Landing Brigade’s three infantry battalions were assigned to secure the parachute dropping and glider landing zones on the first day, September 17, for the second lift of the 1st Airborne Division on D+1. All the glider pilots were trained to fight as infantrymen and Kettley eventually joined the small force defending Oosterbeek church, an aid post for the wounded.
When it became clear that the south end of the Arnhem road bridge could not be taken — the north end had been captured on the first day — the evacuation of the survivors north of the Rhine was ordered on September 25. Kettley refused to abandon the wounded in Oosterbeek and was taken prisoner.
He, Lieutenant Leo Heaps of the Canadian SAS and a sergeant of the 6th Parachute battalion, agreed to escape at the first opportunity. Their chance came as they were leaving the station at Stroe in cattle trucks bound to Germany. The trio prised away the planks barring the truck window and jumped out. It was dark, so they set off northwards to find a small boat on the coast. Overtaken soon after dawn by a Dutchman on a bicycle, they were put in contact with the local Resistance and, after joining in an ambush of a German convoy, taken to Tiel, where they crossed the River Waal into the safe hands of the 1st Canadian Army, except for Heaps who stayed with the Resistance.
Flown back to England, Kettley went to the Airborne Forces HQ to be debriefed on his escape. He was told men of the 1st Airborne Division were in hiding beyond the Waal and that he was to be attached to MI9, the escape planning branch of British intelligence, to organize an attempt to rescue them.
He returned to Holland in October 1944 and re-established contact with Heaps and the local Resistance. They found no sign of the Airborne survivors but, unwilling to give up their mission, set up a crossing service over the Waal for the Resistance.
In February 1945 they received a light signal from the far bank to indicate the need for boats to cross. With the help of the Resistance, a group of evaders was rescued, including Brigadier Shan Hackett, former commander of 4th Parachute Brigade who had been wounded at Arnhem and nursed back to health by the Resistance.
Kettley was demobilised in 1945 and joined Sainsbury’s accounts department, eventually becoming the credit manager at the company’s headquarters at Blackfriars. Some years later he took over running the sporting and social activities of the company, in which the Sainsbury family maintained a close interest.
His first wife Marguerite, née Archer, whom he married in 1940, predeceased him. He is survived by his second wife, Irene Jauch, a daughter of his first marriage and a stepson.
Alan Kettley, wartime glider pilot, was born on September 20, 1916. He died on December 22, 2012, aged 96
Wing Commander Peter Olver
Ïèëîò-èñòðåáèòåëü, ñðàæàâøèéñÿ â Áèòâå çà Áðèòàíèþ, â Ñåâåðíîé Àôðèêå è Ñèöèëèè
Wartime ace who fought in the Battle of Britain, North Africa and Sicily before being shot down and captured
Shot down on his first operational sortie, with 603 Squadron, in October 1940, Peter Olver was not at all daunted by the experience. In spite of injuries sustained in baling out of his stricken Spitfire, he returned to front-line action and went on to achieve combat victories with 603 and 66 squadron over the Channel and Occupied Europe before being posted to North Africa in the summer of 1942.
There, as a flight commander in 238 Squadron before commanding 213 Squadron then 1 Squadron South African Air Force and finally 244 Wing, he was in the thick of the action and was noted for his bravery and leadership. After the Axis capitulation in Tunisia he was involved in the air preparations for the invasion of Sicily in July 1943. Shot down for a second time, he was captured by the Germans and spent the remainder of the war in captivity.
Olver was awarded the DFC and was also an “ace” by virtue of his officially accepted tally of five combat victories, which included two aircraft shared destroyed — though his actual total was in all probability considerably higher.
Peter Olver was born at Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, in 1917 and joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve in 1938. Called up just before war, he joined 611 Squadron of Spitfires as a pilot officer in September 1940. He was soon moved to 603 Squadron at Hornchurch, from where, after only seven hours on a Spitfire, he flew his first sortie on October 18. Jumped by Messerschmitt 109s he baled out and landed in a field near Hastings. Although injured on landing, he soon recovered and was able to rejoin his squadron on operations, soon to claim his own first kill.
Rested towards the end of the year, he next joined 66 Squadron, also a Spitfire unit, which, as Fighter Command went onto the offensive, was engaged in sweeps over the Netherlands and in providing air cover for Channel convoys. He gained more combat victories, notably a Heinkel He111 over St Ives in May 1941, and another damaged on the same day, as well as a couple of Me109 “probables” over the Dutch coast.
He was posted to North Africa in June 1942, at first attached to 213 squadron before being posted as a flight commander to 238 squadron, later to rejoin No 213 as its CO. Flying Hurricane IIs he was involved in intensive fighting over the Western Desert as the Eighth Army retreated from the Afrika Korps and the Italians, often with no certainty that the airfield from which they had taken off would still be in their hands at the end of a sortie.
With ascendancy gained over the Axis forces after Alamein in November 1942 the logistics were less fraught, though combat was no less intense for the RAF’s fighters. On November 14 Olver led 213 Squadron in an attack on an Italian airfield at Agedabia far behind the front line during which he destroyed three Fiat CR42 biplane fighters on the ground out of six claimed by the squadron that day. For this he was awarded his DFC, the citation noting that “although one of the fuel tanks in his aircraft caught fire and exploded he led his squadron back to their landing ground”.
In December Olver was given command of 1 Squadron SAAF which had been involved in the fighting over the Western Desert since April 1941 but had sustained severe losses, including three of its commanders, and was thought to need a CO of his experience. An early success in command, as the squadron flew sorties with its new Spitfire Vs, was his destruction on January 21, 1943, of a Macchi MC202, perhaps Italy’s best wartime fighter. He was later to share in the destruction of an MC205, a development of the MC202, in Tunisia.
In February he was appointed Squadron Leader Flying of 244 Wing and in April, succeeded its leader, Wing Commander Ian Gleed, when he was shot down and killed. He led the wing until the Axis capitulation in Tunisia in May 1943, after which he led it to Malta in preparation for the invasion of Sicily.
On July 11, the day after the Anglo-American landings, he was leading a sweep over Sicily and had shot down one, possibly two, Me109s, when he was himself attacked, and crash landed in flames, suffering burns, a broken arm and a dislocated shoulder. After treatment in Naples he was taken by train to Germany where, after various PoW camps, he ended up in Stalag Luft III, at Sagan in Silesia. After the war he left the RAF and with his wife, Daphne, whom he had met as a WAAF officer at RAF Wilmslow in Cheshire, he went out to Kenya, where he farmed for a number of years at Gilgil. He returned to Britain after Kenyan independence in 1963 and continued to farm, in Devon and then in Wiltshire, where he also owned racing pigeons.
He is survived by his wife and their four sons.
Wing Commander Peter Olver, DFC, wartime fighter ace, was born on April 4, 1917. He died on February 14, 2013, aged 95
Coldstream Guards officer who served with the ‘Coats Mission’ which protected the Royal Family in the war
For two years early in the war Jeffrey Darell served with the small force responsible for the close protection of the Royal Family. After this he joined the 1st (Armoured) Battalion Coldstream Guards and distinguished himself in the 1945 battle of the Rhineland.
Need for a royal protection unit became apparent in June 1940 after Germany occupied Norway and overran France and the Low Countries. The prospect of an invasion prompted the establishment of the “Coats Mission” — it was commanded by Major James Coats of the Coldstream Guards, who had served with the ski battalion formed to aid Finland in its war with the Soviet Union. The force comprised a 124-strong company of the Coldstream Guards, to which was attached a troop of Rolls-Royce armoured cars from the 12th Royal Lancers stationed in the Royal Mews. The plan in the event of invasion was to escort King George VI, Queen Elizabeth and the two princesses to one of three safe houses: Newby Hall in Yorkshire, Pitchford Hall in Shropshire or Madresfield Court in Worcestershire.
So sensitive was the mission that every Guardsman was interviewed personally by Coats. The company second-in-command, Captain W. G. Tatham, had won the Military Cross in the First World War; Darell was to achieve the same in 1945 and another subaltern, Lieutenant I. O. Liddell, won the Victoria Cross in Germany in 1945. The force was tested by frequent emergency exercises and accompanied the Royal Family to Sandringham, Norfolk, where it manned a daytime observation post on the estate water tower.
The Coats Mission was stood down in May 1942, by when Darell had been appointed ADC to the GOC-in-C Southern Command, a post he held until joining 1st Coldstream Guards later in 1942.
Having landed in Normandy with 5th Guards Brigade of the Guards Armoured Division in June 1944 as a captain, Darell was promoted major to command a tank squadron in September. During the battle of the Rhineland in February-March 1945, his squadron of Sherman tanks was supporting 5th Coldstream Guards, of 32nd Guards Brigade, in an operation to clear the Xanten-Rheinberg road. The prospects were not promising.
The infantry start line was dominated by high ground held by the enemy, as was the left flank of the advance, with self-propelled and 88mm anti-tank guns in both areas. The situation called for resourceful leadership.
Masking the enemy positions with artillery-fired smoke and handling his tank troops with consummate tactical skill, Darell cleared the Xanten-Rheinberg road and took 120 prisoners, an action for which he received the MC.
Jeffrey Lionel Darell was the son of Lieutenant-Colonel G. M. Darell, 3rd son of the 5th baronet. He was educated at Eton and RMA Sandhurst, from where he was commissioned into the Coldstream Guards in July 1939. After the end of the war in Europe, he was successively Brigade Major of the Household Brigade, commanding officer of 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards in Germany and commander of Old College RMA Sandhurst. From 1964 to 1967 he commanded 56th Brigade of the Territorial Army and completed his service as Commandant of the Mons Officer Cadet School, Aldershot, from 1970 to 1974.
He was an ADC to the Queen from 1973 to 1974. He was High Sheriff of Norfolk in 1985.
He succeeded his cousin in 1959 to become the 8th holder of the baronetcy. His wife, Bridget, survives him with a son, Guy, who succeeds to the baronetcy, and two daughters.
Brigadier Sir Jeffrey Darell, Bt, MC, Guards officer, was born on October 2, 1919. He died on February 27, 2013, aged 93
General Lino Oviedo
Ïàðàãâàéñêèé ãåíåðàë, ëè÷íî àðåñòîâàâøèé äèêòàòîðà Ñòðàññíåðà â 1989 ãîäó
General Lino Oviedo was the very model of a Latin American soldier-politician — now a fast-dying breed. He played a prominent role in ending the 35-year military dictatorship of Paraguay’s President Alfredo Stroessner, he was twice imprisoned for plotting to overthrow one of Stroessner’s civilian successors, and he ran three times for President himself, without success. His third bid was cut short when he was killed in a helicopter crash on his way back from a campaign rally.
Oviedo was one of a group of army officers, led by General Andrés Rodríguez, who carried out the military coup that ousted Stroessner in 1989. As a colonel, it fell to him to inform the ageing President that he was under arrest. He was promoted to Brigadier-General soon afterwards, and in 1991 President Rodríguez appointed him commander of the powerful First Army Corps.
With elections coming up in 1993, and the military committed to returning to their barracks, Oviedo could not resist the temptation to dabble in politics again. He threw his weight behind a prominent businessman, Juan Carlos Wasmosy, as candidate of the traditionally dominant Colorado party, and appears to have made sure that he won. In return, Wasmosy made Oviedo his army commander, but the two soon fell out — over the spoils of office rather than political differences.
Matters came to a head in April 1996, with each demanding the other’s resignation. A tense stand-off was only resolved when Oviedo agreed to step down on condition that he was appointed minister of defence — an understanding that Wasmosy reneged on as soon as Oviedo had resigned his command.
Undeterred, the now retired general set about organising his own faction within the Colorado party, the National Union of Ethical Colorados (Unace), and he won the party’s nomination to run for President in the 1998 elections. Depicting himself as a providential figure, called upon to solve all the poverty-stricken country’s problems, and with a nice line in crowd-pleasing rhetoric, often delivered in a mixture of Spanish and Guaraní, Paraguay’s two official languages, Oviedo took the lead in the opinion polls. Absolute power appeared to be within his grasp.
He was prevented from taking part in the election, however, when his long-running feud with Wasmosy caught up with him. A few weeks before polling day he was finally convicted by a court martial of plotting to overthrow the President two years earlier, and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Oviedo was out of the race, but he was not finished yet: his running mate, Raúl Cubas, took his place as presidential candidate, won the election and promptly ordered his release.
With Oviedo on the loose again, vicious factional rivalries in the Colorado party came out into the open, culminating in the assassination of Vice-President Luis María Argaña, Oviedo’s arch-rival in the party, in March 1999. Oviedo was immediately accused by his enemies of involvement in Argaña’s death and crowds of protesters took to the streets of the capital, Asunción. After snipers shot seven dead seven young demonstrators, President Cubas resigned and Oviedo fled to Brazil.
Even in exile he remained a force in Paraguayan politics, and he was again accused of involvement in a coup plot in 2000. But the Brazilian Supreme Court turned down a request for his extradition, on the grounds that the charges against him were politically motivated.
In 2004 Oviedo decided to return home to face the music. He was arrested on arrival at Asunción airport, on the orders of President Nicanor Duarte Frutos (an old ally of Argaña), and returned to prison to complete his 10-year sentence. He served just three of them: his conviction was finally overturned by the Supreme Court in 2007, after fellow officers queued up to testify that there never had been a coup plot against Wasmosy. This enabled Oviedo to run in the 2008 presidential election for Unace, which by this time stood for National Union of Ethical Citizens, as Oviedo had broken with the Colorados. But his moment had passed, and he came third, in elections that saw the end of 61 years of uninterrupted rule by the Colorados and victory for a left-wing former bishop, Fernando Lugo.
Lino César Oviedo was born into a poor family in Juan de Mena, in rural Cordillera department, in 1943. His father, Ernesto, had fought in the Chaco War against Bolivia in the 1930s. After graduating from the military academy in 1962, he underwent further training in Germany — a period of his life he liked to recall by peppering his already bilingual speeches with German phrases. Back in Paraguay he enjoyed rapid promotion as a protégé of General Andrés Rodríguez, the future president.
He never lost his taste for politics. Ignoring the lessons of the 2008 election, Oviedo decided to make a third bid for the presidency in elections scheduled for April 21 this year. He was returning from a rally in the northern city of Concepción when his helicopter crashed in the Chaco region. He, his bodyguard and the pilot were all killed. President Federico Franco declared Oviedo a “military hero” for his role in the overthrow of Stroessner, and decreed three days of official mourning.
General Lino Oviedo, Paraguayan soldier and politician, was born on September 23, 1943. He was killed in a helicopter crash on February 2, 2013, aged 69
João Van Dunem
Ó÷àñòíèê àíòèêîëîíèàëüíîé áîðüáû â Àíãîëå, îáâèíèâøèé ðóêîâîäñòâî ÌÏËÀ â èçìåíå ïðèíöèïàì ìàðêñèçìà
João Van Dunem was an Angolan revolutionary who fell foul of his country’s post-colonialist government. After being imprisoned he made his way to Lisbon where he worked as a journalist, and then moved onto London where he joined the BBC World Service. In 2005 he returned to Angola where he became director-general of a media conglomerate with interests in print and TV journalism.
João Vieira Dias Van Dunem was born in Luanda in October 1952, and was a member of the Van Dunem family which traces its lineage to a Dutch colonist who came to Angola in the 16th century. He was educated in Angola, and became involved at an early age in the MPLA government which had taken over from the Portuguese at the independence of Angola in 1975.
In 1976, when he was only 24, he was sent to Cuba as a military official, and he played a central part in the active relationships between the two revolutionary governments.
In late 1977 he returned to Angola, where he was arrested on his arrival under the accusation of being a member of the so-called “fraccionistas”, a group of young idealists who felt that the MPLA was abandoning the Marxist and egalitarian principles on which the new country had been established.
During that year, the President of Angola moved strongly against the Fraccionistas, in spite of his earlier close political and family relationships with many of its members, including the Van Dunem family to which he himself belonged. João Van Dunem, his older brother José and many others were thrown into prison.
João’s elder brother was executed, and João himself was taken before a firing squad, only to be reprieved at the last moment. He spent almost a year in prison, where he was so closely confined that he and his fellow prisoners had to take turns to lie down to sleep.
In 1979 he was released. He took refuge first in Lisbon, where he lived for almost 10 years working as a journalist, before travelling to the United Kingdom. He eventually became head of the Lusophone language programmes of the BBC World Service. During his time in London, he was a loyal and generous friend and point of contact for many members of the Angolan diaspora.
In 2005, he returned to Angola, as head of the BBC World Service in Luanda, and in 2007, he became director-general of the Media Nova group of companies, which includes TV Zimbo, the weekly Diario Economico and other journals. In 2009, he was appointed chief executive of the Media Nova group, and he retired from this position in 2012 because of ill-health.
His career in some sense epitomises the triumph and the tragedy of emerging Africa. He was born into the local elite, with close links to his country’s colonial past, and he played a major part in the process of liberation. The elite turned on its own, and expelled him, and he later returned to an uneasy alliance with the same forces against which he had earlier rebelled. He nevertheless made an important contribution to the development of the Angolan media, whose present strength owes a great deal to his leadership.
João van Dunem is survived by his daughter.
João Van Dunem, revolutionary, journalist and media director, was born in October 1952. He died of cancer on February 8, 2013, aged 60
