James Alexander Malcolm Caldwell (27 September 1931 – 23 December 1978)[1] was a Scottish academic and a prolific Marxist writer. He was a consistent critic of American foreign policy, a campaigner for Asian communist and socialist movements and a supporter of the Khmer Rouge. Caldwell was murdered a few hours after meeting Pol Pot in Cambodia, though who was responsible for the murder remains debated.
In December 1978, Caldwell was a member, along with Elizabeth Becker and Richard Dudman, of one of the few groups of Western journalists and writers invited to visit Cambodia since the Khmer Rouge had taken power in April 1975. The three visitors were given a highly structured tour of the country. "We traveled in a bubble", wrote Becker. "No one was allowed to speak to me freely." On 22 December, Caldwell had a private audience with Pol Pot, the leader of Cambodia. After the meeting, he came back to the guesthouse in Phnom Penh where the three were staying in a mood described by Becker as "euphoric". At about 11:00 p.m. that night, Becker was awakened by the sound of gunfire. She stepped out of her bedroom and saw a heavily armed Cambodian man who pointed a pistol at her. She ran back into her room and heard people moving and more gunshots. An hour later a Cambodian came to her bedroom door and told her that Caldwell was dead. She and Dudman went to his room. He had been shot in the chest, and the body of a Cambodian man was also in the room, possibly the same man who had pointed the pistol at Becker.[6]
The motives for Caldwell's murder remain unexplained.[7] Andrew Anthony, writing in The Observer, notes: "Certainly there must have been some kind of in-house involvement, as the guests were guarded. But who instructed the guards, and why they did so, remains a subject of speculation." Journalist Wilfred Burchett and some of Caldwell's family members believe that Caldwell was killed on the orders of Pol Pot, possibly following a disagreement between the two during their meeting. This belief was also shared by Australian historian and friend of Caldwell Keith Windschuttle, who claimed that Caldwell had been shot by "two of Pol Pot's henchmen".[8] British intelligence services also concluded that "Pol had ordered Caldwell's death."[9]
The Khmer Rouge conducted an internal inquiry, which found that one of the guards present "had been having an unhappy love affair",[9] and had gone on a shooting spree before killing himself. Four of the guards at the guest house were arrested and two of them confessed under torture at the Khmer Rouge's S-21 prison that the killers were subversives attempting to undermine the Khmer Rouge regime and that Caldwell was killed "to prevent the Party from gathering friends in the world". One of them also implicated Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National DefenceSon Sen.[9] Pol himself stated he believed Dudman to have been the killer, accusing him of being a CIA agent sent to discredit the regime. Pol's former aide and "Head of Security at the Foreign Ministry",[9] Phi Phuon, who witnessed the aftermath of the incident, thought that the purported killer "had been murdered and someone had tried to mask his death as a suicide."[9]
Caldwell's brother, David, believed that his brother "had "discovered the truth about the Pol Pot regime" but "dared not admit this to either Becker or Dudman"."[10] However, journalist Andrew Anthony wrote that this "seems unlikely",[10] citing historian David P. Chandler, who met the translator present at Pol and Caldwell's meeting, "who remembered a very pleasant exchange conducted in a spirit of enthusiastic agreement."[10]
In his biography of Pol Pot, author Philip Short claimed that the "likeliest explanation, which, perversely, the regime refused to credit because of its obsession with traitors, was that the attack was the work of a Vietnamese commando unit. No one else had a comparable interest in showing up Khmer Rouge incompetence and no one else was as well-placed to do so."[9]
Three days after Caldwell was killed, the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and soon put an end to the Khmer Rouge government. Becker cautioned against applying "rational thinking to the situation",[10] stating that Caldwell's "murder was no less rational than the tens of thousands of other murders",[10] and that in the end his "death was caused by the madness of the regime he openly admired."[10]
