Year Zero - where was I ?

In my time between hospital visits and playing at taxis, I've been reading a collection of investigative journalism edited by John Pilger.

In fact I'm up to one of his pieces on Cambodia under Pol Pot. I can't do justice to the history of Cambodia since the 1960's in one blog entry, but its current problems began with the secret US bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam war, when the US dropped more bombs on populated areas of Cambodia than they did on Japan in WW2. The result was an extreme Communist ideology with Pol Pot at it's head.

They were called the Kmher Rouge, and they fought a violent civil war, coming to power in April 1975, Year Zero. On the day they took power in the capital, Phnom Penn, they turned off the lights, emptied the city at gun point, and marched the population away into the jungle. They then singled out anyone educated or who had even the slightest contact with foreigners and murdered them; doctors; nurses; teachers; engineers. Essentially the lights went out, and Cambodia sunk into a world of terror almost beyond the imagination until Vietnam, who were attacked by Cambodia, invaded in 1979. By then 20% of the entire Cambodian population were dead; that's 2.25 million people.

If that wasn't bad enough, they were partly funded by the US, and it gets worse. Becuase the Cambodians were liberated by the "wrong" side in the cold war, the US and Britain secretly went to war on Pol Pot's behalf, feeding and training his thugs to re-enter Cambodia from Thailand, to bomb, murder and terrorize the civilian population (as they were also doing in South America). They were trained in the use of, and supplied with, anti-personel mines by the British Government, many of wich were made by the Royal Ordnance. Training was provided by the SAS, who also undertook some missions with the Kmher Rouge within Cambodia to use the mines against civilian targets. We know that because some members of the SAS were so sickened by what they were expected to do that they spoke to the press. Direct support of Pol Pot began under Carter (and boy do I see him under a new light) and Wilson/Callahan, and significantly increased under Regan and Thatcher. Pol Pot may have been a xenophobic genocidal commie, but he was our xenophobic genocidal commie, and not Breshnev's.

Whilst direct military help was kept very quiet, the US and the UK abused their positions on the UN Security Council to ensure that Pol Pot's Kmher Rouge, even after the genocide came to light, was recognized as the legitimate government of Cambodia, and in doing so ensured that neither UNESCO or the WHO could operate within Cambodia. So, rather than help the surviors of Pol Pot, the US and the UK allowed them to die en masse, and the body count continued to climb. Anyone who stood up to them in the press had their character assasinated. One of the few organizations the chose to stand up to government pressure was Oxfam, who published a book on the genocide and the behaviour of Pol Pot and western governments. It's not in print anymore because the UK establishment threatened Oxfam with removal of charity status if they didn't withdaw it and drop their campaign.

So that's a potted history, it's the timeline I want to mention. Year zero was 1975. The overthrow of Pol Pot was in 1979. US and UK support for Pol Pot continued through to 1991 (and for the Kmher Rouge to this day as far as I can tell). I was only 11 in 1975, and I was 15 in 1979, and 27 in 1991, and I remember a bit of fuss over Year Zero, but not much. Yet it was one of the most appalling and shameful episodes in British foreign policy during my lifetime. Where was I? Where were we all?