Siden det har oppstått en diskusjon her på KK-Forum om John Pilgers syn på
Kambodsja, gjengir jeg i sin helhet en artikkel av ham som sto i australske
Sun Herald 19.april 1998:
" 'It is my duty,' wrote the correspondent of The Times at the liberation
of the Nazi death camp at Belsen, 'to describe something beyond the
imagination of mankind.'
That was how I felt in the summer of 1979 when I arrived in Cambodia.
In the silent humidity, houses, office blocks, hotels and schools stood
empty, as if vacated that day. In the ruined National Bank, blown up by the
retreating Khmer Rouge, a pair of spectacles rested on a ledger.
When the afternoon monsoon broke, the streets nearby ran with money as
thousands of brand new bank notes washed away in the gutter.
Children, orphans, collected and dried them as fuel; I can still hear the
crackle as the money burned.
As if in a mirage, a pyramid of cars rose on a football field. It included
an ambulance, a fire engine, police cars, refrigerators, washing machines,
TV sets, telephones and type writers. It was as if these had been swept
there by a gigantic broom on April 17, 1975: Year Zero in Pol Pot's calendar.