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| Elizabeth Becker, a former foreign correspondent for the Washington Post and New York Times, in Cambodia. (Photo: by VOA Khmer) |
Wednesday, 08 February 2012
Men Kimseng, VOA Khmer | Washington, DC
“I want Cambodians to be able to walk in off the street and see this.”
Rare photographs depicting life under the Khmer Rouge go on display in Phnom Penh this week, along with audio interviews with regime leaders that will become part of a permanent collection in the capital.
The exhibit, “A Reporter’s Dangerous Guided Tour Through Democratic Kampuchea,” chronicles the work of Elizabeth Becker, an American journalist and author of “When the War Was Over,” a book on Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge.
The exhibit runs from Thursday through the end of February, after which the material will become a permanent collection at the Bophana Center in central Phnom Penh.
In it are dozens of photographs from a 1978 trip Becker took with other journalists at the invitation of Khmer Rouge leaders. While much of the trip was managed as the regime sought to prevent an invasion from Vietnam, Becker was able to surreptitiously snap some photographs.
By the time of her visit, the Khmer Rouge had long since emptied all cities and put people to work in collectives, as they executed their vision of a peasant utopia. Under the failed policies, some 1.7 million people, nearly a quarter of the population, would die.
Her photographs depict a quiet capital: an abandoned Central Market, empty buildings, vacant houses under armed guard.
“It was a weird place,” Becker told VOA Khmer in an interview. “Now the pictures don’t look weird, but it was Cambodia without people. Cambodia is people laughing, people eating, people dancing, people praying. None of that. It was nothing. It was the absence of real life.”
Other subjects include Pol Pot and his former foreign minister, Ieng Sary, who is now on trial for atrocity crimes, greeting journalists with smiling faces.
Becker’s notebooks and audio recordings come from Washington University, where she was once a student before becoming a foreign correspondent for both the New York Times and Washington Post.
At the center, 25 photographs will be hung on the walls, with another 40 displayed on a large screen. Audio recordings can be heard via computers and headsets.
Becker said she did not want her work tucked away in a US library or university.
“I want Cambodians to be able to walk in off the street and see this,” she said.
9 comments:
Yes EB, I'd seen you and I still see you as a freaking Viet sympathizer, a pro-Viet journalist from head to toes...
8:57 AM
Liz Becker is not the same as the crazy woman named Judy Jecobsen who sides with Viet Congs. Liz doe snot side with Viet Cong.
I agree with 8:57 AM. Liz Becker is definitely lacking knowledge in history. She doesnt seems to understand the current political game under Comrade Hun Sen and former Khmer Rouge/CPP comrades
10:54 AM and 8:57 AM agree with you both.
Elizabeth Becker is not a neutral jounalist.
For Khmer great danger is from yuon Hanoi ambition to put Lao and Cambodia under youn annex and exterminate ethnic Cambodians as Noun Chea and Khieu Sampphan say about Indochina Federation.
So Elizabeth Becker is only one of many foreinger who tried to cover up yuon Hanoi genocide , war cirmes and eterminate ethnic Cambodians.
The Vietcong Communist Hanoi Can't hiding the goods.bad. and the Ugly must come out democracies systems will open them a part as nature things..
10:20 AM, it's just that EB is more dangerous reporter/journalist than that cash cow JJ of Down Under so-called scholar!!!
Iamgine at one meeting, EB wore hairdo and vietnamese robe talking about Khmer refugees plight!
Khmer/Cambodian folks, please to make sure that it is not NEW HIDDENT/SECRET YUON/VIET AGENTS THAT FORM NEW KHMER ROUGES AS YUON/VIET PROPAGANDA in the blind eyes of foreigners and Khmer people again.
It is has been a Yuon/Viet trick and secret among Khmer Society. There are many Yuon/Viet born in Cambodian/Srok Khmer speaking Khmer language and their Yuon language. They may causes the problem again in 21st century.
We,Khmer people, should know that Without Khmer Rouges like Pol Pot, Ieng Sari, Khiev Saphan, Noun Chea (who had done the big mistakes and wrong, but they admitted that they had said that they had done something wrong and told the truth in ECCC about Yuon/Viet) including other Khmer Rouges Compatriots who care about Khmer National because they repeatedly heard about the trick of Yuon/Viet playing too many games and tricks to encroach the land of Khmer to overcome and satisfy Hanoi/Ho Chi Minh goals as their plans. So far, Viet/Yuon master-minded evil leaders have not achieved their goals so far until today, but they still keep trying and keep trying to play the trick. Now, Khmer people, you see that Hun Sen is the one that Yuon/Viet Communist Master-Minded evil masters are using him (Hun Sen, their dog) until today. SEE???
Just watch out, Khmer/Cambodian people and don't be fooled.
Wake up, wake up, wake up!!! It is a wake-up call!!!
Khmer Yeurng!
Vietnam secrete agents working at the inner circle of Pol Pot regime did not harm Elizabeth Becker and Richard Dudman, because they were pro vietnam and blame Pol Pot regime for the killing of 2 millions of Cambodians. Indirectly, they have been helping Vietnam to control Cambodia by installing it's puppets: Hun Sen, Chea Sim and Heng Samrin as suppreme leaders of Cambodia.
In fact, Vietnam is the main culprit that behind the killing field, it should also be held responsible for the life of 2 millions cambodians died during 1975 and 1978.
Is Elizabeth Becker pro-Vietnamese?
On February 8, 2012, Elizabeth Becker, a former foreign correspondent for the Washington Post and New York Time revisited Phnom-Penh, Cambodia and gave a lecture at Pannasastra University. She said there had been 30 years of silence on the horrors of the Khmer Rouge Regime and no official acknowledgement that a great crime had been committed. But, with the tribunal, the crime had been acknowledged.
On December 23, 1978, a group of three persons, including two American Journalists, Elizabeth Becker and Richard Dudman, and one British Academic, Malcolm Caldwell were invited to visit Cambodia. Just hours after the interview with Pol Pot, which took place in the French Colonial Head Quarter (La Residence Superieure) in Phnom-Penh, Caldwell was shot to death in the guest house where they all stayed, thus reducing three-person group to two. On 25 December 1978, Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion of Kampuchea (Cambodia).
In Malcolm Caldwell Remembered, Part 5 of the Khmer Rouge Canon 1975-1979,Elizabeth Becker said that Caldwell's death would show that the revolution could not even care for its friends, that it was fraught with chaos, meaning that Vietnam will not allow anyone to survive in Cambodia, be him or her a Cambodian or Foreigner if he or she is not sided with Vietnam’s Indochina Policy. This led to the question why Malcolm Caldwell got killed whereas Elizabeth Becker and Richard Dudman were spared? Was this due to the latter’s two pro-Vietnamese stand?
Malcolm Caldwell was probably slain by someone in the inner party circle opposed to Pol Pot meaning Vietnam’s secret agents, because he might have shown that he was a strong supporter of Pol Pot Regime. Caldwell was an admirer of Pol Pot, because he considered that Pol Pot was the first person to lead the Peasant Revolution. More importantly, Vietnam’s secret agents didn't want their killing fields being revealed to the people in the outside world. If UN knew what was really happening in Cambodia, UN would perhaps send it's peace-keeping forces to oust the Pol Pot's regime. If the UN peace-keeping forces had gone to Cambodia at that time, all the Vietnamese Confederation of Indochina plans could have been derailed. The Vietnamese didn't want their demonic plans to be destroyed by the Western intervention because they have made them since 1930 of Indochinese Communist Party/Federation, by the late Ho Chi Minh. If the UN had started from the West to overthrow the Pol Pot's regime, many of the Vietnamese agents, who secretly had impersonated themselves as the leaders of Khmer Rouge, would have been captured alive for their interrogations.
Based on the above information, All Cambodian Patriots could draw a conclusion whether Elizabeth Becker is a friend of Cambodia or a pro Vietnamese Journalist.
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