Photographer Finishes ‘Hell’ Tour of Country

By Pich Samnang, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
02 December 2008

Click here to listen to the Khmer audio program

[Editor’s note: As part of the Swedish Cambodian Friendship Association, Gunnar Bergstrom spent 14 days in Cambodia in 1978 and was given a public relations tour by top leaders of the regime. Only later did he learn of the nearly 2 million who died under Democratic Kampuchea. Bergstrom returned to Cambodia for the first time in 30 years for a two-week tour of the country, displaying photographs he took in 1978, in an exhibition called “Gunnar in the Living Hell,” and hoping to find his own reconciliation. He spoke to VOA Khmer in Phnom Penh at the end of his travels.]

Q. First of all, how did you feel after having met and talked with the Cambodian people in some provinces over the past two weeks?

A. I feel relieved because I thought I was doing a good thing now and a bad thing 30 years ago, so things change to the better.

Q: You went to the provinces of Kampong Cham, Battambang, Siem Reap, and others. How did people react to you, as well as your photos?

A: People [have] asked me before if I think people would be very angry at me, but they were very forgiving. There were some reactions in Battambang about the photo exhibition. They thought it was too nice. I told them that we have texts with them to explain but some of them thought that it was a little too nice, still looks like a Pol Pot propaganda. I think they want an explanation that doesn’t exist. I think they want more.

They cannot understand Maoist thinking, and I tried to explain how I think and they want more explanation, but I don’t have any more. And at the end, I told them these are explanations, they are not excuses. These explanations, I think I can understand them myself, but I still have the responsibility to think, you know, and that’s why I have the guilt and have to say I am sorry.

Maybe they find it hard to understand. Someone said, “You traveled for 14 days [in 1978], you must have seen something.” I said, “You can very well see what I saw, but that’s what the pictures show; that’s what the Khmer Rouge showed us.”

Q. You said you learned about some cruel things committed by the Khmer Rouge before coming to Pol Pot’s Cambodia. And during your 14-day tour then, you were also suspicious of what was shown to you, but why did you still think the Khmer Rouge was good?

A. Because at that time, Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge, we saw them as liberating fighters. They were winning the war, and they were building a new Cambodia, and we could never have imagined they were building a new terror. And the rumor came that we could not believe, and we have a vision of a country that was against the Soviet Union too. We loved that. They would be not only against the Americans but they would be against the Soviet Union too. We were pro-Chinese, and now China had a friend.

And when they evacuated the city, that was rather complicated. We tried to understand it with Khieu Samphon’s theory. There were rumors that all the leaders, Ing Sary and Pol Pot were in the fields a few hours now and then, [that] everything was equal. We believed that they were doing something that they showed the third world, that you can grow your own food, you don’t need aid, aid will corrupt you, and that was very inspiring, that they could manage on their own. That’s what we believed first.

Q. You met and had dinner with Pol Pot and Ing Sary. What did you talk about?

A. We gave Pol Pot the questions beforehand. We had to do that. Many communist leaders do it like that. And he read his answers. One question was about genocide, killing people, and of course he said no. We asked about the war with Vietnam, about what [are] the next steps in the Cambodian revolution. And the things he said in our interview were nothing new really. I think it was talks about the international campaign against Cambodia, as he called it; talks about relying on your own forces; there was no aid. But, I don’t recall any long conversation; lots of translations.

Q. What made you change from pro-Pol Pot to anti-Pol Pot?

A. The first change came reading the refugees’ stories again. I had read them before. But reading them again and thinking critically, I could see that can be true and my pictures can be true too. They took away people at night and they did not openly kill them in the fields. The refugees’ stories, most of them, were so many, and not only rich people, but I had to rethink the whole thing in the beginning of 1979. But, the whole rethinking, I close it by saying I was wrong and than I started to work with other things. I think you have to go through it better and that took some more years.

When I got the question, “How could you believe Pol Pot?” and then I had to rethink, Well how could I? And then I understood the old Mao’s thinking, that we wanted what we wanted, and we used blind eyes, and that was the third stage the third phase of understanding and changing. That was some years ago, when a book came out in Sweden about this trip and then suddenly I hear myself saying this trip should have been made. That was the final step in evaluating it. It took 30 years, but that was because I did other things in between.

Q: Upon realizing the Khmer Rouge were not as good as you had always believed, what did you do with it?

A: The first phase, I wrote an article in a big Swedish paper [saying] that we had been wrong but nothing was done for 10 to 15 years, except when I met people, I said, “I am sorry that I was wrong.”

Q: Did you think that’s enough?

A: When I wrote that article, I thought that was enough for many years, but when a journalist asked me, “How could you support the Khmer Rouge?” and I reacted very strongly. Then, I realized, that’s not finished, there is more to do.

Q: What else did you do?

A: Keep on talking about and discuss it, realizing how wrong I’d been. But I didn’t do so much publicly because I honestly didn’t think that people would be very interested in what we were thinking 10, 15, 20 years ago. But, I met a journalist, talked to them. When the book came out two years ago about this trip, I wrote an article in the paper again. And this time, we did not only say that we were wrong, I said we should have understood much earlier, we have a responsibility. I got them published and people invited me to do a few talks in Sweden. Now many years [later], I wanted to give all my information to someone here, and I gave it to DC-Cam and the next step was the question to go here.

Q: Some people I talked to say they are angry at you for having taken fake photos. But they hoped that you would do something for them, to compensate for their suffering from the regime you used to support. How would you respond to that?

A: If there is something I can do and if there is a good idea, I will think and listen. The only thing I know right now is that I have to go back to Sweden. I have to do my normal job. If I can contribute some more, I will do that. If that’s testifying in the trial, I’ll do if they want me to. I’ll do what I can do. If there is any money from this trip, I will not keep it. I will give it to some good things here. If someone else has some more good ideas, I’m open for new ideas.

Gunnar Bergstrom: "For my part I am sorry. If you ask me did I feel guilt, yes." ... Can any former KR leaders say the same?

RIGHTS-CAMBODIA: Khmer Rouge Through Blinkered Eyes

By Andrew Nette

PHNOM PENH, Nov 20 (IPS) - When Gunnar Bergstrom stepped off the plane into the sweltering heat of the Cambodian capital in August 1978, he did not even begin to suspect the fate that had befallen the country whose struggle he had supported from afar.

Part of a delegation from the pro-Khmer Rouge Sweden-Kampuchean Friendship Association (SKFA), and one of the few groups of Westerners allowed to visit Democratic Kampuchea, Bergstrom and his friends were greeted by a group of black-clad Khmer Rouge officials.

"We knew that the Khmer Rouge had emptied Phnom Penh and other big cities, that was no surprise," Bergstrom told a seminar here this week.

What they did not know was that the people were being overworked, starved, tortured, and executed as part of an ultra-radical social experiment that would ultimately lead to the deaths of nearly two million Cambodians.

"We did not see the murders and killings, we had no idea about [the interrogation centre] Tuol Sleng."

"I understood that some things were arranged but not everything," he says of their 14 days in country, during which they travelled widely and had dinner with the secretive Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot and his foreign minister Ieng Sary.

"Now I think the whole trip was propaganda and we should never have made it,’’ said Begstrom. "It is still a mystery about how you can delude oneself so much. We were fooled by smiles but what fooled us the most was our own Maoist glasses we wore."

The agenda behind Bergstrom’s current visit, his first since the delegation 30 years ago, is very different from that which inspired the 27-year old Maoist in 1978.

With the assistance of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, an non-government organisation (NGO) dedicated to archiving the history of the Khmer Rouge, he will retrace the delegation’s journey, hoping to get the life stories of the people they met all those years ago.

As part of this, he will showcase a display of photographs he took during the visit, entitled ‘Gunnar in the Living Hell: Democratic Kampuchea, August 1978’.

He hopes it will shed light on the final days of the Democratic Kampuchea regime, and generate wider debate about the nature of truth and propaganda with Cambodians, the majority of whom have no memory of the Khmer Rouge in power.

Like thousands of intellectuals in the sixties, Bergstrom supported the revolutions in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia and thought the new regimes would usher in better societies.

"I was active in the movement against the war in Vietnam when I was 19," he remembers.

"The first demonstration I went to was about Cambodia. We were young and many of us were recruited after a while into the Maoist movement."

"People did not want Soviet communism, but we young people thought China was different, that it was an ideal society where there were no oppressors."

"When the Khmer Rouge won in April 1975, we celebrated."

Soon after the Khmer Rouge took power, the SKFA asked permission to visit but were knocked back.

Then in April 1978, permission was granted, part of a broader public relations drive undertaken at the time by the regime.

The delegation returned to Sweden where they undertook a speaking tour and wrote articles in support of the Khmer Rouge. "After six months I left that movement because I realised I had been wrong about the Khmer Rouge," recalled Bergstrom.

Although most other members of the delegation feel the same as Bergstrom, one member continues to defend Pol Pot, and their visit remains controversial today.

Bergstrom and his delegation were not the only Swedes to visit Democratic Kampuchea.

"In 1976, the country’s Beijing ambassador and a senior official from the foreign ministry came, returning with positive reports of what was going on," says Eskil Frauck of the Living History Forum, a quasi-government think tank in Sweden that is co-sponsoring Bergstrom’s visit.

"Delegations from the United States and other European countries returned with positive stories,’’ Frauck said. "This all made it easier for the world to believe life in Democratic Kampuchea was much better than it was."

Bergstrom’s delegation was taken to factories, agricultural cooperatives, schools and a hospital. They went to the port of Kompong Som, now Sihanoukville, where they saw rice being loaded onto ships for export to China.

"We thought this was proof they were self sufficient, that they were able to grow more rice than they needed."

For their audience with Pol Pot, they had to submit questions in advance. "We gave him nine. One was about the accusations of genocide. He denied it was happening and said it was just Western slander."

"I had no strong impression of Pol Pot. People asked me if he seemed crazy. At the time he seemed normal. That was even scarier in retrospect because it meant he was a rational killer."

One part of the dinner that makes Bergstrom laugh today was a brief conversation he had with Ieng Sary in French. "He asked me who should be allowed to come to Cambodia, should they let in journalists from the Swedish media."

"I told him of course they should, that they had nothing to hide," he says, smiling at the irony.

It is what Bergstrom and the other members of his delegation did not see during their time in Cambodia that haunts him.

By late 1978, not only had the Khmer Rouge leadership purged those suspected of being intellectuals or supporting the old regime, but also ethnic Chinese, Vietnamese, and large sections of their own movement deemed not sufficiently loyal to Pol Pot. This had resulted in open rebellion in parts of the country.

Large parts of Cambodia were experiencing severe famine, and relations with Vietnam had completely collapsed over repeated border incursions by the Khmer Rouge. Hanoi was only a few months off a full-scale invasion, which occurred on Christmas day 1978.

"Since we did not speak Khmer we had to speak to people through an interpreter," says Bergstrom. "That’s one of the main reasons they were able to make sure we saw only what they wanted us to see."

"Anytime I saw something disturbing I was able to fall back on the excuse that the revolution was young and they will learn," he admits

The photographs taken by Bergstrom and another member of the delegation are a haunting reminder of the manipulation they faced trying to interpret the truth of what they were being shown.

In addition to overt propaganda shots of cultural performances are pictures of smiling children, factory workers, men and women eating in communal halls, and people planting rice against the backdrop of the lush Cambodian countryside.

Age has given the pictures a washed out, grainy feel. The colours are muted and much is clocked in shadow. The country they depict is poor but functioning. There are no pictures of torture, starvation or violence.

"I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out what was fake and real," says Bergstrom. "The hospital we visited was definitely fake, as there were no hospitals."

"We were taken to a technical high school in Phnom Penh, which was either a fake or a school for the children of senior cadres."

"Certainly the cooperatives we visited were model ones that they must have shown all visiting delegations."

"I cannot undo the trip. I can only make things right now. For my part I am sorry. If you ask me did I feel guilt, yes."

Khmer Rouge photo exhibition opens in Cambodia

Thursday, November 20, 2008
ABC Radio Australia

In Cambodia, a unique photography exhibition is touring the provinces. The photographs were taken by Sweden's Gunnar Bergstrom in 1978, when he was a guest of the Khmer Rouge. At the time Mr Bergstrom was a committed Maoist who believed Pol Pot was embarking on a project to create a perfect society. It was only after he arrived home that Mr Bergstrom decided he'd been used as a propaganda tool and, far from creating social perfection, the Khmer Rouge was systematically destroying Cambodia's people.

Presenter: Bill Bainbridge
Swedish photographer Gunnar Bergstrom, Phnom Penh

Click here to listen to the program (Windows Media)

In 1978 Gunnar Bergstrom thought the Khmer Rouge represented a glorious future. One in which inequality and injustice would be eradicted. When he and four colleagues from the Sweden-Kampuchea Friendship Association were invited to visit Pol Pot's Democratic Kampuchea he saw happy villagers and a flourishing society. But he also saw things which caused him disquiet. It took him six months to talk about them and thirty years before he could return to the country and fully face his mistake.

GUNNAR BERGSTROM: In Sweden and some of these countries the Maoist faction of the left was quite strong. I guess all leftist people had this vision but especially for me the Maoist version of equal society, no oppressors, we were told that the leaders were a cooperative group and no personality cult like Mao Tse-Tung took or Kim il-Sung because we didn't like that. They were the persons that we had worked for to support during the whole war with the Americans and when Khmer Rouge won the war I didn't think it came to our minds that they could become the new oppressors.

BILL BAINBRIDGE: So then you went to Cambodia in 1978, what did you see there?

GUNNAR BERGSTROM: Well, we were taken on the tour that I think today was a fake, arranged propaganda tool. At the time I think I was impressed. We were taken on a 14-day trip to cooperatives, farming, factories, we were taken to exceptions and fakes and given a positive picture of this period.

BILL BAINBRIDGE: You've said though that you did have some what you called forbidden thoughts at the time. What were those?

GUNNAR BERGSTROM: For instance, when we were forbidden the first day to go outside of the room in Phnom Penh, except for a few areas, we complained and then they let us moved around but I thought at that time that maybe the whole, all the rumours maybe are true, this is a concentration camp. So those thoughts crept around in my mind but I didn't share them with the rest of the group. They didn't fit the Maoist picture.

BILL BAINBRIDGE: And so at what point did you begin to realise that you'd been so wrong about the Khmer Rouge?

GUNNAR BERGSTROM: Six months after we came home, maybe eight months. I wrote an article in a paper in Sweden that we had been wrong. It's just that I thought that I could write that article and then move on to other things. I didn't realise the magnitude of the misjudgment, I didn't realise the whole gigantic picture, that took a longer time, but I left the group and the movement there about half a year after I came home.

BILL BAINBRIDGE: So now you're exhibiting some photographs that you took at the time. What is it that you can see in those photographs that you couldn't see in 1978?

GUNNAR BERGSTROM: I think you have to realise that some of the things I see in the photographs are because I have information now that I didn't have then. I know that masses of killings occurred - that colours the pictures today. But I can also let some of the forbidden thoughts come up now and some of these things I can see just because, you know, the mind is liberated from Maoist glasses.

BILL BAINBRIDGE: And so this is your first trip back in 30 years?

GUNNAR BERGSTROM: Yes.

BILL BAINBRIDGE: What have you found? What kind of reception have you had there?

GUNNAR BERGSTROM: The reception has been mainly positive, you know. But I think that I have to tell Cambodian people I'm sorry and then another part is talking about that period again and learning from it and I hear that there are young Cambodians who don't believe that it was that bad. So I think I had, you know, for these three days mostly positive reactions. There are also other reactions, you know, it wakes memories for survivors of Tuol Sleng and people who lost everyone during this period but I'm still prepared for someone who would maybe be very angry at me or upset or something, but so far it has it's been quite OK. And more than OK.

Ex-Khmer Rouge admirer says sorry

Almost two million people died under Pol Pot's regime
"We didn't want to believe that the liberators had become oppressors" - Gunnar Bergstrom
Gunnar Bergstrom accepted a rare invitation to tour Cambodia in 1978
"People say, 'Now he's apologised, we accept it.' It's important for many people to hear such things" - Youk Chhang, Director, Documentation Centre of Cambodia

Wednesday, 19 November 2008
By Guy De Launey
BBC News, Phnom Penh

Gunnar Bergstrom has the slightly bemused air of a man who has just realised the joke is on him.

Finding himself back in a much changed Phnom Penh after a 30 year absence probably has a lot to do with it.

But repeatedly explaining how his younger self was conned must surely have had an impact as well.

This former Khmer Rouge supporter is here on a mission of redemption and reconciliation.

In just two days he has already visited genocide memorials and former torture centres, faced a grilling on Cambodian television, and a seminar audience full of survivors of the Pol Pot era.

Over the next two weeks, he will take a similar message of contrition to the provinces.

'Liberators'

It might not be possible to turn back the clock, but Mr Bergstrom is at least going to try to explain why he and his colleagues in the Swedish Cambodian Friendship Association not only sympathised with the Khmer Rouge, but enjoyed the organisation's hospitality on a two-week visit in 1978 - even dining at the same table as leader Pol Pot.

"I was at that time a member of a friendship association which was a remnant of the anti-Vietnam/Cambodia War movement in Sweden, which was very strong in the Western world," Mr Bergstrom told the BBC.

"Of course we didn't want to believe that the liberators had become oppressors."

The Swedish group were far from unique in their long-distance support of communist groups in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos.

And they were not the only ones who were reluctant to accept that the supposed "good guys" who had fought against US-backed forces might possess serious flaws of their own.

The poet and foreign correspondent James Fenton faced a similar dilemma when he arrived in Cambodia shortly before the shambolic Lon Nol regime fell to the merciless, black-clad Khmer Rouge.

Serious flaws

"I admired the Vietcong and, by extension, the Khmer Rouge," he writes in All The Wrong Places. "The theory was, and is, that where a genuine movement of national liberation was fighting against imperialism, it received our unconditional support."

With first-hand experience of the situation, the reporter soon came to fear the Khmer Rouge in the same way most Cambodians would.

But once Pol Pot and his men were in power, they closed the country to foreign journalists, so long-distance admirers like Mr Bergstrom knew little of the true picture.

"We thought that the movement, the revolution here, was an example to the third world," he says now.

"They didn't take foreign aid, they relied on their own forces, no money, egalitarian… 'The atrocity stories cannot be true totally anyway; probably just slander.' That maybe was the picture in 1978."

So the Swedish group were happy to accept a rare invitation to tour Cambodia.

Their movements were closely controlled, and sightseeing opportunities put forward only the best face of the revolution.

Modern rubber factories, efficient collective farms and smiling workers were all presented for the delegation's edification.

Mr Bergstrom says that even then he knew that everything could not be as it appeared, that all the refugee stories about atrocities could not be lies, but he admits to suppressing his doubts.

"I was crazy enough to support the Khmer Rouge when I came home, and I quieted that voice," he sighs.

Full horror

Within months of his visit, Vietnamese-backed forces ousted the Khmer Rouge, and the full horror of the Pol Pot era finally became public knowledge.

Mr Bergstrom's support of the revolution came to an abrupt halt.

Now the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, which has been gathering evidence for the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, has arranged for the former Swedish solidarity group member to return.

The centre's director, Youk Chhang, hopes that Mr Bergstrom's latest tour will help the reconciliation process.

"People say, 'We were right - foreigners were here to help the Khmer Rouge and now he's apologised, we accept it.' It's important for many people to hear such things."

It is important for Mr Bergstrom to say it as well.

He has donated his photos from the 1978 trip to the centre, and they will be displayed permanently at the Tuol Sleng genocide museum.

Each snap - smiling women, deserted bus stations, a riverboat party - has two contrasting captions, labelled "Thoughts from 1978" and "Thoughts Now".

Some have a third caption: "Forbidden Thought at the Time".

The "quieted voice" is no longer silent.

A Rejection of Photos, Not the Photographer

Gunnar Bergstrom on Monday toured the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, where his "Gunnar in the Living Hell" exhibit will be on permanent display in December.

By Pich Samnang, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
18 November 2008

Click here to listen to the Khmer audio program

Photographer Gunnar Bergstrom, who toured the country under the Khmer Rouge in 1978 as part of a group of Swedish sympathizers, began a series of seminars and photo exhibitions Tuesday in an effort to come to grips with the past and explain to Cambodians how he was denied the truth.

The 93-photograph exhibit, “Gunnar in the Living Hell,” features never-seen photographs from Bergstrom’s personal archive. Cambodians in Phnom Penh, where the exhibit opened Tuesday, expressed discontent with the photographs, but not with the man who took them.

Photos that show people carrying earth in shoulder-pole baskets, smiling and eating together, do not reflect the reality of the regime, said Prum Net, a 66-year-old farmer from Takeo province, who was invited to the exhibition by the Documentation Center of Cambodia.

“In fact, people looked really upset under the Pol Pot regime. They were forced to work, not smiling,” he said.

Phnom Penh resident Keo Sovann, who was examining the photograph of a boy undertaking math at a black board, said that during the time of the Khmer Rouge no such thing existed.

“This is just a fake photograph that the Khmer Rouge set up to show the world that the regime looked good, that they were educated people, but in fact, there was none,” he said.

As part of the Swedish Cambodian Friendship Association, Bergstrom spent 14 days in Cambodia in August 1978, where he was given an idealized tour of factories and fields by top leaders of the regime, including Pol Pot and Ieng Sary.

Pol Pot died in 1998 without seeing trial. Ieng Sary is now in a Khmer Rouge tribunal detention facility, facing atrocity crimes along with four other jailed leaders of the ultra-Maoist regime.

Reach Sambath, spokesman for the tribunal, said at the opening Tuesday that the photos may not be acceptable to some survivors of the regime.

“They were just propaganda photos, rather than reality,” he said.

Still, Reach Sambath praised the efforts of the photographer for his “courage” in showing the exhibition and accepting that he had been duped by the Khmer Rouge.

Som Pov, a 63-year-old commune chief from Takeo, said that even if the photos did not reflect reality, Bergstrom had simply captured images of subjects organized for him.

“Even now, when an inspector comes to inspect, there must be an arrangement beforehand,” she said. “So Gunnar was just taking the already arranged photographs.”

The exhibit will now move to other provinces, including Kampong Cham, Kampong Thom, Siem Reap, Battambang and Takeo. The exhibit will go on permanent display at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in December.

Gunnar Bergstrom's "Mea Culpa"

Gunnar Bergstrom, right, a former Swedish leftist who sympathized with the Khmer Rouge regime, walks as he tours to the former Khmer Rouge's notorious S-21 prison, now known as Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Monday, Nov. 17, 2008. The former Swedish sympathizer of the late Cambodian dictator Pol Pot has visited the country's genocide museum during a trip to seek forgiveness for his past support of the Khmer Rouge regime. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Repentant Khmer Rouge fan returns

Tuesday, 18 November 2008
By Guy De Launey
BBC News, Phnom Penh

A Swedish man who supported the Khmer Rouge movement has returned to Cambodia for the first time in 30 years.

Gunnar Bergstrom was part of a group which toured the country and dined with the Khmer Rouge leadership in 1978.

He now says he regrets what he did - and plans to apologise to survivors of the Pol Pot era.

As many as two million Cambodians are thought to have died because of Khmer Rouge policies, and trials are underway of surviving Khmer Rouge leaders.

The last time Gunnar Bergstrom came to Phnom Penh, there was virtually nobody in the city.

The Khmer Rouge had evacuated the population to the countryside.

Many of them died there - from malnutrition, disease or summary execution.

Different light

But Mr Bergstrom's Swedish support group saw the Khmer Rouge in a different light.

They thought the ultra-Maoist organisation had liberated Cambodia from imperialist western powers.

On their carefully controlled tour in 1978, the Swedes only saw the positive side of the revolution - factories, hospitals, and smiling peasants.

Even then, Mr Bergstrom says, he felt troubled by the stories which were starting to emerge.

"There were times when the doubts crept into my mind, but I wouldn't express them to the group of the other people until later.

"But you shouldn't exaggerate it. I was crazy enough to support the Khmer Rouge when I came home, and I quieted that voice," he said.

Strong reactions

Now Mr Bergstrom is trying to make up for not speaking out at the time.

He is staging an exhibition of his photographs from the time, called "Living Hell", and he is touring the country again.

This time he will be addressing public forums for survivors of the Khmer Rouge era.

And he is prepared for strong reactions.

"I can answer questions and will have to deal with any reaction I meet," he said.

He said he would be pleased if that helped in educating young people in Cambodia about what happened.

He also wants to educate people in Sweden too, to not be uncritical, he said.

Mr Bergstrom's return to Cambodia coincides with the long-awaited Khmer Rouge Tribunal.

Five former leaders of the organisation have been charged with crimes against humanity.

Swede apologizes for sympathizing with Khmer Rouge

In this photo released by Hedda Ekerwald, Gunnar Bergstrom, a former Swedish communist, poses for a picture at an abandoned market in Kampong Cham province in eastern Cambodia during a visit at the invitation of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1978. Bergstrom supported the late dictator Pol Pot's denial of international accusations that the Khmer Rouge regime was committing atrocities against the Cambodian people during its 1975-79 rule. Bergstrom now apologizes to the Cambodians for his past misjudgment and support of the Khmer Rouge propaganda as he prepares to visit Cambodia for the second time in 30 years. (AP Photo/Courtesy of Hedda Ekerwald)
In this photo released by Hedda Ekerwald, Gunnar Bergstrom, a former Swedish communist, in white shirt, meets with Cambodian villagers during his visit to Cambodia at the invitation of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1978. Bergstrom supported the late dictator Pol Pot's denial of international accusations that the Khmer Rouge regime was committing atrocities against the Cambodian people during its 1975-79 rule. Bergstrom now apologizes to the Cambodians for his past misjudgment and support of the Khmer Rouge propaganda as he prepares to visit Cambodia for the second time in 30 years. (AP Photo/Courtesy of Hedda Ekerwald)
Gunnar Bergstrom, left, a former Swedish communist who sympathized with the Khmer Rouge regime, talks to journalists upon his arrival at Phnom Penh International Airport, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Sunday, Nov. 16, 2008. The 57-year-old, who visited this country in 1978 as a guest of the Khmer Rouge regime, returned to Cambodia on Sunday for the first time in 30 years, to donate his archives from the trip and publish a photo book recounting the journey. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Click here to read Gunnar Bergstrom's Living Hell in English
Click here to read Gunnar Bergstrom's Living Hell in Khmer

2008-11-16
By KER MUNTHIT
Associated Press

When Gunnar Bergstrom was a guest of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime in August 1978, the young Swede enjoyed a dinner of oysters and fish hosted by dictator Pol Pot.

The meal followed a rare interview he and three of his countrymen were given by the secretive communist leader who labeled talk about genocide under his rule a Western lie.

The young European leftists, members of an unofficial friendship delegation, shared Pol Pot's view, seeing the Khmer Rouge takeover as a revolution to transform Cambodia into a fairer society benefiting the poor.

Bergstrom has since realized he was mistaken about Pol Pot's brutal regime, and he wants to make amends.

"We had been fooled by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. We had supported criminals," he told The Associated Press by phone from his Stockholm home.

The 57-year-old Swede arrived in Cambodia Sunday, for the first time in 30 years, to donate his archives from the trip and publish a photo book recounting the journey.

Bergstrom has deep regrets about his August 1978 trip to Democratic Kampuchea, as Cambodia was then called. He was one of only a handful of Westerners whom the xenophobic Khmer Rouge allowed to visit during its 1975-79 hold on power.

While presenting an earnest and progressive face to foreign visitors, the Khmer Rouge were inflicting a reign of terror that left an estimated 1.7 million dead from starvation, overwork, disease and execution.

"For those still appalled by my support of the Khmer Rouge at the time, and especially those who suffered personally under that regime, I can only say I am sorry and ask for your forgiveness," Bergstrom says in his book, "Living Hell."

In 1978, Bergstrom was president of the Sweden-Kampuchea Friendship Association, a small political group that identified with the communism of Mao Zedong's China and was motivated by the movement against the U.S. war in Vietnam.

To their Swedish sympathizers, the Khmer Rouge revolution presented an "idealistic idea about an alternative society," Bergstrom said.

The Khmer Rouge had its origins in the struggle against French colonialism in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos, while its ideology was shaped in part by the French university education of several of its leaders, including Pol Pot. It came to power by toppling a pro-American Cambodian government in 1975 after a bitter five-year civil war.

Within days of their April 17 takeover, the Khmer Rouge began a radical social upheaval, emptying the cities and sending people to work in massive rural collectives. They simultaneously cut almost all links with the outside world.

But the regime's flawed plans for a communist utopia sparked a paranoid search for scapegoats.

Bloody purges swept the country, and attacks were made on border villages in neighboring Vietnam. An invasion by Hanoi would drive the Khmer Rouge from power in early 1979.

A few months before the collapse, the Khmer Rouge invited foreigners, mostly left-wing sympathizers, to visit in a halfhearted effort to whitewash accusations of human rights abuses.

During their 14-day tour, Bergstrom's delegation saw what their hosts wanted them to see: smiling Cambodian faces, clean hospitals, well-fed people eating happily in cooperative kitchens.

They interviewed Pol Pot, who called accusations of atrocities "Western propaganda and a lie."

The Swedes were sympathetic.

"Pol Pot was maybe wrong but he wasn't that bad," Bergstrom said, recalling his thoughts at the time. "We came home with a belief that we have found the truth somehow that this (story about killings) is Western propaganda."

"Our excuse was that 'The (Cambodian) revolution is young, immature, you will never have a perfect revolution, and that these killings ... are now (occurring) in the beginning and will stop later.'"

But evidence that emerged after the Khmer Rouge's fall forced Bergstrom to change his views.

"It's like falling off the branch of the tree," said Bergstrom, who now works as a counselor for drug addicts. "You have to re-identify everything you have believed in."

To make amends, he wrote articles for the Swedish press renouncing his support for the Khmer Rouge.

He is donating his photo and movie archive from the 1978 trip to the Documentation Center of Cambodia, an independent group researching Khmer Rouge crimes. The center is publishing his book and organizing forums around Cambodia at which Bergstrom will speak, and he will visit the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, a former high school and the Khmer Rouge's largest torture facility.

"It's a healing process for him," said Youk Chhang, the center's director. "He's part of our history now, and it's our mission to help people reconcile and move on."

Exhibit of 1978 ‘Hell’ Photos To Tour Country

In 1978 photographer Gunnar Bergstrom was shown factories, fields and classrooms, in a Khmer Rouge propaganda effort.

By Kong Sothanarith, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
13 November 2008

A Swedish photographer who in 1978 was given a staged tour of the Khmer Rouge’s communist utopia will return to Cambodia for the first time Saturday, in part to exhibit the photographs he took on the trip and in part to apologize for missing the truth.

As part of the Swedish Cambodian Friendship Association, Gunnar Bergstrom spent 14 days in Cambodia in August 1978, where he was given a public relations tour by top leaders of the regime, including Pol Pot and Ieng Sary.

He visited factories and rice fields in Phnom Penh and the countryside and walked away believing Cambodia’s economy was showing promise, that the communist agrarian experiment was working. Only later did he learn of the nearly 2 million who died under the regime.

Bergstrom will return Saturday to begin a two-week tour “to speak with over 400 commune chiefs and villagers,” the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which is supporting the exhibit, said in a statement. “He will tell Cambodians—and ultimately the world—about the things he saw, ignored, and was never shown during his first visit.”

Bergstrom will be visiting a post-war Cambodia where some the regime leaders who hosted him are in jail under the Khmer Rouge tribunal, awaiting trials for atrocity crimes. The first, for jailed prison chief Duch, is expected in early 2009.

The 93-photograph exhibit, “Gunnar in the Living Hell,” features “never-before-seen photographs taken exclusively from Bergstrom's personal archive of his 1978 tour,” the Documentation Center said. “They are in color—unusual for pictures taken in Democratic Kampuchea.”

The exhibit will open at Reyum Arts Gallery and the Khmer Rouge tribunal building in Phnom Penh Nov. 18, before traveling to the provinces of Kampong Cham, Takeo and Battambang later in the month. Finally, the exhibit will be permanently displayed at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, with a duplicate exhibition shown in Stockholm, Sweden.

“The Khmer Rouge prepared [the visit] for him, so he could tell his people what he saw,” said Kalyanee Mam, a public affairs officer for the Documentation Center. “He was shown factories, and he visited a hospital and schools, but those were only an ideal picture that they had organized for him. He could not see behind the scenes.”

“What he saw was busy activity, and that made him think that Cambodia was developing its economy,” she said. “But later, he knew that nearly 2 million were killed in Pol Pot’s regime, and then he felt so guilty. He wanted to present his apology to everyone, because he did not know the truth.... He strongly supports the Khmer Rouge tribunal.”

“As with most visual documents produced for the Khmer Rouge, Bergstrom's collection includes no photos of the torture, starvation, death, and despair for which the Khmer Rouge is so reviled,” the Documentation Center said. “These omissions beg the questions: Was there any justification for the Swedes' support of the Khmer Rouge? Did the Khmer Rouge cadres filter what the Swedes saw, or were the Swedes willfully blind to the conditions surrounding them? Were the Swedes hapless bystanders—or were they, too, victims of the Khmer Rouge, manipulated and duped by the regime?”