Son Sann; Ex-Prime Minister Sought Democracy in Cambodia

Former Prime Minister Son Sann, one of Cambodia’s leading statesmen and fighters for democracy over the last half-century, died in his sleep in Paris on Tuesday, officials said. He was 89.

Son Sann served as prime minister in 1967-68 under then-head of state Norodom Sihanouk, who is now king. Later, Son Sann became a leader in the battle against the Khmer Rouge, which turned Cambodia into a massive killing field.

In a statement released late Tuesday, Sihanouk called Son Sann the “son of the nation and a hero of our Cambodian motherland.”

Son Sann “made efforts to serve his people and motherland wholeheartedly and contributed much, which was priceless for our nation,” the statement said.

Born on Oct. 5, 1911, to a prosperous family from what is now the southern Vietnamese province of Tram Vinh, Son Sann graduated from the elite School for Advanced Commercial Studies in Paris in 1933.

He began his political career as a 24-year-old, becoming deputy governor of Battambang province under the French colonial administration.

He founded the Democratic Party in 1947 and created the National Bank of Cambodia in 1955.

When Sihanouk was ousted in a republican coup d’etat in 1970, Son Sann went into exile. He tried unsuccessfully to reconcile Sihanouk with the republican regime as it fought against a takeover by the communist Khmer Rouge.

Son Sann moved to Paris after the Khmer Rouge government of Pol Pot took power in 1975. He helped found a guerrilla resistance force, the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front, in 1979 at the Thai-Cambodian border and fought both the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese army, which occupied Cambodia from 1979 to 1989.

He told Pope John Paul II at the Vatican in 1983 he was an unwilling guerrilla leader: “I’ve never carried a gun in my life. Besides, since 1968 I’ve observed the five Buddhist abstinences, the first of which is the respect for life of all living beings.”

As the leader of one of the four warring factions that signed the Paris Peace Accords in 1991, bringing peace to Cambodia after more than 20 years of war and civil unrest, he served in the U.N.-sponsored Supreme National Council that guided the nation until 1993 elections.