Cambodia

This special issue of the NI on Cambodia gives me a great deal of satisfaction, not only because of the opportunity to tell Cambodia's story in some detail, but because it allows me to repay a little of what I owe this remarkable magazine. For many years I have read the NI with great respect; I have filed its specialist pieces, its charts and glossaries and recommended it to people who are fed up with the suppression of development issues in the 'mainstream' media. Many an article I have written and film I have made have had their roots in something I read in the NI.

The cover title, Return to Year Zero, is also the title of the sixth documentary film David Munro and I have made about Cambodia and which goes on air on ITV in Britain on 20 April and thereafter in some 30 countries. This issue of the NI, like the film, sounds a clear warning: that the Khmer Rouge may be on their way back to power in a Trojan Horse built for them by the United Nations, or rather by the governments of the US, Britain, China, Australia and other purveyors of a 'peace plan' that has legitimized those responsible for the 'killing fields'.

I believe that, in the fragments of news about Cambodia, the Cambodian people lose. They are invariably represented as a geopolitical 'problem', as 'warring factions' refusing to have their heads banged together by the wise counsellors of the West. Never mind that one of these 'factions' is controlled by Asia's Hitler. Never mind that the West's euphemisms for Pol Pot's crimes - such as 'the policies and practices of the recent past' - are designed to appease and accommodate the underwriters of genocide.

For me this is both an important and urgent issue of NI, for it draws together the past and the present and looks nervously into the future beyond the UN-sponsored elections in May. It also complements our television documentary by raising questions that only the printed page can.

I hasten to add that I am privileged to edit an issue that publishes the work of expert witnesses to Cambodia's tragedy and hope: Ben Kiernan, one of the world's leading Khmer-speaking scholars; his wife Chanthou Boua, the survivor of a family devastated by the Khmer Rouge; Paul Donovan of Action Cambodia UK, who has been my co-editor and has done so much to raise awareness about Cambodia in many countries; Joan Healy, whose understanding of Khmer country people is reflected in her fine prose; Nic Dunlop and Claude Sauvageot, whose superb photographs reflect their care for Cambodia. I would also like to pay tribute to the excellent work of Raoul Jennar, Paul Davies and Peter Carey.

'If understanding is impossible,' wrote Primo Levi of the Jewish holocaust, 'knowing is imperative, because what happened could happen again.' If these pages add something to that knowledge they will have succeeded.

Return to Year Zero
How can the Khmer Rouge - responsible for genocide in Cambodia - be on the way back under the protection of the United Nations? John Pilger argues that the 'peace process' hides what is really the betrayal of the Cambodian people behind a shabby political deal.

Pig earth
The first of four accounts by Joan Healy describing the effects of conflict on rural life in Cambodia.

The original Cambodian
Ben Kiernan on the life and times of a political serial killer - Pol Pot.

Wanted!
The case against the Khmer Rouge

Action - a campaign briefing

Opportunity knocks
Cambodia's introduction to the 'new world order' has brought economic collapse and environmental destruction - Paul Donovan analyzes a lethal combination.

CAMBODIA - THE FACTS

Cotton wool and diamonds
Women are the majority of the Cambodian population, but their condition remains unchanged. Chanthou Boua looks at the consequences.

A menace to civilization
The land has been thickly sewn with mines - John Pilger describes the grim harvest and some remarkable people who are healing old wounds.

Simply - Cambodian history

'Where do I start?'
A few aid agencies breached the 'official' blockade of Cambodia. John Pilger remembers how Oxfam did it.

Letters
Letters from Lahore
Updates
Reviews: plus Gramsci classic
Curiosities
Endpiece: by Rakiya Omaar
Country profile: Belize

FRONT COVER PHOTOGRAPH: CAMBODIAN CHILDREN AT PLAY ON A GUTTED TANK, 1992 BY NIC DUNLOP.
ONLINE MAG MAINTAINED BY SIMON LOFFLER