To make amends
After having visited, and shamefully enough, having defenden the Khmer Rouge in 1978, I left that position and published an article saying that we had bren wrong. But I left it at that. Many years later I got the question: How could you believe in Pol Pot? I was at loss for words and realized that this was serious . It wash´t only like betting on the wrong horse. we had supported a mass murderer. What made it possible to end up so wrong were "maoist glasses ", wishful thinking, del censorship and an ability to make stone cold calculations about the pros and cons of the revolution. The individual human being got lost in this calculus.
The next step in the process came when the book "The smile of Pol Pot" was released in 2006. I am quoted in that book as saying that trip we made in 1978 the trip should never have been made. It became propaganda journey. The author of the book, Peter Fröberg Idling, said then: "If you feel that way you should go back".
In 2007 Youk Chhang from the Documentation Center in Cambodja visited Sweden. I approached him to hand over documents. He saw the photos from 1978 and came up with the idea of putting up an exhibition. I did not want to simply exhibit the old propaganda photos again. The photos got new comments about what I was tinkling in 1978 and what I think about them today. I also discovered the need for a third column: Forbidden thoughts. These were thoughts that did not fit into the picture we wanted to have of the Cambodian revolution. Maybe it was these forbidden thoughts that surfaced when I changed my views and woke up.
In working with the preface of the exhibition catalogue I realized what conclusion I had drawn: I hadn´t only been wrong but explainations were not enough. You can endlessly explain my strange views from 1978 but at the end you´ll end up with the question : Didn´t we have enough facts already in 1978? We did not know everything, most of all we did not know about Tulo Sleng. But what we did know should have been sufficient. There were thousands of refugee stories and we could see the empty cities ourselves.
So the explanations were not enough. An apology was necessary. So I went back to Cambodia after 30 years also to say I am sorry. I did that on seminars, in the streets, villages and in the media
The next step in the process came when the book "The smile of Pol Pot" was released in 2006. I am quoted in that book as saying that trip we made in 1978 the trip should never have been made. It became propaganda journey. The author of the book, Peter Fröberg Idling, said then: "If you feel that way you should go back".
In 2007 Youk Chhang from the Documentation Center in Cambodja visited Sweden. I approached him to hand over documents. He saw the photos from 1978 and came up with the idea of putting up an exhibition. I did not want to simply exhibit the old propaganda photos again. The photos got new comments about what I was tinkling in 1978 and what I think about them today. I also discovered the need for a third column: Forbidden thoughts. These were thoughts that did not fit into the picture we wanted to have of the Cambodian revolution. Maybe it was these forbidden thoughts that surfaced when I changed my views and woke up.
In working with the preface of the exhibition catalogue I realized what conclusion I had drawn: I hadn´t only been wrong but explainations were not enough. You can endlessly explain my strange views from 1978 but at the end you´ll end up with the question : Didn´t we have enough facts already in 1978? We did not know everything, most of all we did not know about Tulo Sleng. But what we did know should have been sufficient. There were thousands of refugee stories and we could see the empty cities ourselves.
So the explanations were not enough. An apology was necessary. So I went back to Cambodia after 30 years also to say I am sorry. I did that on seminars, in the streets, villages and in the media
The trip 2008
The red route I travelled in 1978. The blue route I travelled in 2008
