SCHANBERG Sydney Hillel
Pseudonym: TCW-624
Cases: Case 002/01
Category: Witness
Background and role
Sydney Hillel Schanberg, an American journalist, began reporting on Cambodia in 1970 while The New York Times Bureau Chief in New Delhi.
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Between 1970 and 1975, he lived in Cambodia for two years.
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He stayed behind when the American Embassy officials and reporters left Cambodia on 12 April 1975 and was evacuated with the French Embassy staff in May 1975.
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Historical background
Schanberg testified on the 1970 and 1973 American bombings of the Khmer Rouge.
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After 1973, the American military personnel at the US Embassy advised the Cambodian regime and supplied arms, without taking part in the fighting.
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After the US withdrew support and the Khmer Rouge started to grow,
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the then-Prime Minister Sirik Matak accused the US President Nixon of betrayal.
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In 1975, the situation in Phnom Penh was miserable, with children starving, and only an hour or two’s daily electricity.
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Same year, the Khmer Rouge cut off the supply line and humanitarian relief coming from the Mekong River.
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On 6 February 1975, the Khmer Rouge bombed a school in Phnom Penh, killing at least 10 children, and wounding 25-30.
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Another bombing occurred outside the witness’s hotel, maiming innocent civilians.
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The Khmer Rouge also shelled the city in April 1975.
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The Trial Chamber in Case 002/01 found that the “Khmer Rouge did not have proper rocket launchers and rockets fell primarily in residential areas”.
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The evacuation of Phnom Penh in April 1975
The military entered Phnom Penh first, “to organise things”, and the political and governmental leaders arrived later.
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Khmer Rouge soldiers entered Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975: some new, others seasoned soldiers.
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Almost the entire population of over two million was evacuated on 17 April 1975.
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People were driven out of their homes like cattle, wrongly told that the Americans would bomb Phnom Penh.
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“[T]here was an air of panic and fear”.
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The Khmer Rouge did not provide water, transport nor food to the evacuees.
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Several hundred people, mostly civilians,
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filled the streets.
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They left Phnom Penh in all directions,
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and when they moved too slowly, the Khmer Rouge fired shots into the air.
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Khmer Rouge soldiers looted shops and residencies.
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They took radios and watches from the evacuees
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and smashed cars into walls attempting to drive them.
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The mood in Phnom Penh changed: “[g]overnment soldiers, who had been embracing their conquerors [Khmer Rouge] a few hours before, are now shedding their uniforms in fear all over town”.
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An explanation offered by Khmer Rouge and their supporters for the evacuation - food shortages - was, according to Schanberg, incorrect, all the Khmer Rouge needed to do to relieve the shortages was stop blocking the Mekong River.
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Schanberg witnessed the evacuation of the Preah Ket Mealea hospital on 17 April 1975.
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Everyone had to leave – paralysed people, critical cases, people on plasma.
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Doctors were forced to abandon patients mid-surgery.
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Schanberg was told about the evacuation of Kampong Chhnang on 18 April 1975, where Khmer Rouge emptied hospitals without any notice.
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The same applied in Ponley, Krakor, and Pursat – in Pursat, he saw houses looted and half-finished meals on the tables.
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On 19 April 1975, Khmer Rouge evacuated Calmette, a French government hospital.
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Two weeks after the evacuation of Phnom Penh, Schanberg saw dozens of bodies along the roads and assumed they were patients who had died on leaving the city.
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The Trial Chamber in Case 002/01 noted that, according to Schanberg, people left Phnom Penh because the Khmer Rouge occupied it and because they wished to feed their children,
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that the situation at the Preah Ket Mealea hospital was “as a ‘slaughterhouse’ that was ‘wall to wall’ with wounded”,
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and that no doctors tended to patients left in Calmette hospital.
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Evacuation of the French Embassy
On 20 April 1975, after being held at gunpoint by several Khmer Rouge officers along with two other journalists, Alan Rockoff and Jon Swain,
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Schanberg was evacuated to the French Embassy with the other foreigners.
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The three reporters were saved by Dith Pran, who negotiated their release.
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Two other officers, including a former Naval deputy commander, were not released.
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It was widely known that the Khmer Rouge was after the “seven super traitors”, namely: two Presidents of the Khmer Republic, Cheng Heng (1970-72), and Lon Nol (1972-75); four Prime Ministers of the Khmer Republic: Prince Sirik Matak (1971-72), Son Ngoc Thanh (1972), In Tam (1973), and Long Boret (Prime 1973-75); and the Commander-in-Chief of Khmer National Armed Forces, General Sosthene Fernandez.
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Lon Nol had escaped to Hawaii.
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On 20 April 1975, Lon Non (Minister of Interior of the Khmer Republic and Lon Nol’s younger brother) and Long Boret
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were taken as prisoners to the Ministry of Information (the Khmer Rouge’s temporary headquarters
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) with 50 others,
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where they were executed.
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The Khmer Rouge looked for high-ranking Cambodians, and took Sirik Matak and Boun Hor out of the French Embassy.
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The Khmer Rouge considered the French Embassy to be a regroupment zone for foreigners, which ruled out asylum.
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Long Boret’s wife unsuccessfully asked for asylum at the French Embassy.
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Dyrac, the French Consult, began conducting marriages between Cambodian women and foreigners so the women could remain at the Embassy; the Khmer Rouge found out and told him to stop.
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The Khmer Rouge ordered all Cambodians without foreign passports to leave the Embassy.
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Schanberg recalled a new-born baby being left with a French woman, while the parents were taken away.
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Francois Bizot, an arachnologist and a French-Khmer interpreter at the Embassy, helped some Cambodians without permission to leave to join convoys taking foreigners to the Cambodia-Thai border on 30 April 1975.
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The foreigners were treated well on the journey of several days – the Khmer Rouge brought food and stopped along the way.
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