"There Is Nothing, Monsieur"

"There is Nothing, Monsieur

But Phnom-Penh, a dead capital, may be coming back to life

The worldwide effort to save the Cambodian people from mass starvation continued to gather steam last week. A group of Western nations asked U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim to declare the sprawling refugee camps along the Thai border to be internationally supervised "safe havens," protected by the force of world opinion. Private relief efforts were also gathering momentum. On the day after Thanksgiving a DC-8 cargo plane carrying $1.5 million worth of canned meat, baby formula, antibiotics and other supplies landed at Phnom-Penh's Pochentong Airport. It had been chartered by Operation California, an organization headed by two former antiwar activists, Llewellyn Werner, 30, and Richard Walden, 33. Aboard the flight was TIME Correspondent Gavin Scott. His report on a 48-hour visit to this strife-torn land:

Responding to international appeals, the radical Marxist regime of Viet Nam's ally President Heng Samrin has finally modified its rhetoric about the relief effort. It no longer denounces the effort as a veiled attempt to assist the 20,000 to 30,000 Khmer Rouge guerrillas still fighting the Vietnamese invasion.

Aid officials believe that 165,000 tons of rice, as well as huge amounts of oil, sugar, fish and dried milk are needed within the next five months to prevent massive deaths from hunger and related diseases. Said Ouch Borith, 28, the neatly dressed director of Cambodia's International Aid Relief Program: "We disregard ideological considerations when it comes to assistance. We will gladly take it from any country. Rice and medicines are the main priorities, but the emphasis is on rice." Since the Khmer Rouge abolished currency, rice has become the only medium of exchange. One kilo fetches a kilo of fish; two kilos are worth a chicken.

Just how great are Cambodia's needs was apparent as we drove along the road from the airport into Phnom-Penh. The broad two-lane highway was clogged with trains of bullock-drawn carts, people weaving to and fro on bicycles, and trucks, some of them inherited from the long departed U.S. During the past month, a tide of refugees from the famished countryside has swelled the permanent population of the city from about 10,000 to 30,000; approximately 70,000 others are encamped just outside.

Phnom-Penh's business district can hardly be said to conduct any business at all. The little ateliers where workmen hammered tin, ingenious mechanics kept cars and trucks running with paper clips and baling wire, and rows of women bent over sewing machines have all been destroyed or closed. Until 1975 the Ruseokeo textile plant on the outskirts of the city employed 600 workers making cotton cloth. With help from OXFAM, the Oxford-based relief agency, it has since reopened, but only half of its looms are being used. Reason: a lack of spare parts for the steam boiler that drives them. Complains Manager Tiv Chhivky, 45, "I don't know what parts to ask for. We want to reconstruct, but we don't have the money."

Relics of the destructive policies followed by the ousted regime of Premier Pol Pot are everywhere. Torn iron shutters lie twisted on sidewalks amidst festering heaps of garbage. In once elegant residential neighborhoods, most of the villas are now hollow hulks, festooned with uprooted eucalyptus trees and scarred by bullets or grenades. Where the Roman Catholic cathedral once stood is a barren empty lot; it is hard to imagine a building ever having been there. The National Library was partially ransacked, its floor is strewn with books.

The only institution seemingly left undamaged by the Khmer Rouge is the Antiquities Museum, with its collection of precious artifacts, the Chamcar Mon Palace, which Heng Samrin uses as headquarters, and the graceful Samarki (Solidarity) Hotel, formerly the Phnom, temporary home of teams from CARE, OXFAM and UNESCO. The unused swimming pool is filled with dirty water, prompting speculation that it has not been changed since the days of Lon Nol. It was never changed then either. The hotel bar, the only one functioning in town, can occasionally come up with a bottle of "33" beer imported from Viet Nam. The menu of the Samarki's dining room is limited to watery vegetable soup, chicken and rice. As a waitress admitted: "To tell you the truth, there is nothing, monsieur."

One of our first stops on a tour of Phnom-Penh was Toul Sleng Prison, once a French lycee. Within its quadrangle of three-story concrete buildings in a serene palm-studded quarter of the capital, 20,000 Cambodians were reportedly tortured and killed by Pol Pot's henchmen. The prison has now become a museum, crammed with grim mementos of the fallen regime's barbarity. On display are handcuffs, chains, bamboo cages and iron bars that were applied, red hot, to the genitals of prisoners. On a blackboard are inscribed the jailers' instructions to their victims: " 1. You must answer in conformity with the questions I ask you. 2. During beatings or electrocution you must not cry loudly. 3. If you disobey any of my regulations, you will get either ten strokes of the whip or five electric shocks." Said Curator Ing Pech, 52, an electrical engineer who is one of only four known survivors of the death camp: "Everyone here was accused of working for either the CIA or the Soviet KGB. After I received 50 blows to the head, I confessed. But after eight months, I was freed to work in the prison because I was the only one who could operate the electrical system." Those less fortunate ended up in mass graves. We were taken to one such site on the edge of the city. Out of the ground protruded a human skull.

Back at Phnom-Penh's only orphanage, formerly a Catholic school, we saw young victims of Cambodia's agony. The guides trotted out winsome Sophon, 4, whose father, a captain in Lon Nol's army, was killed by Pol Pot's forces. Now she listlessly waved her arms as she sang a song titled The Day They Killed My Father. At the end, when she described her father's death, she drew a forefinger across her throat, as if to slash it.

Outside the capital, the rice paddies and cornfields along Route 4 had a deceptively lush look; the rainy season had just ended. Provincial officials predict that the harvest from the crop that was planted in June will be 70% of normal; but independent estimates are that throughout the country, the so-called short season may yield only a fifth of what is normally reaped. In the entire province, there is only one doctor, a Vietnamese "adviser." Some 500 patients are crammed into the hospital in Kompong Speu, which has only 200 beds. The facility has no laboratory to analyze blood or urine or any means of boiling water. Outside the compound is a cluster of bamboo and palm-leaf huts housing 89 grievously undernourished orphans, whose bloated stomachs and matchstick limbs are signs of severe deficiencies. The staple of their woefully inadequate diet: powdered milk mixed with water trucked in from a river near by.

Despite the willingness of Heng Samrin's regime to accept outside assistance, only about one-fourth of the necessary supplies has been committed. The government has not acceded to the proposal by relief agencies to establish a "land bridge" from Thailand, over which thousands of tons of rice and other goods could be trucked in. But aid officials now sense a willingness to cooperate among Cambodian officials. It remains to be seen what will be the impact of the new attitude. Some 180,000 Vietnamese troops are preparing a final offensive against Pol Pot's surviving forces. Their attack could drive hundreds of thousands more into refugee camps in Thailand, where so many Cambodians have already sought to escape the tragedy of their homeland.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.