Khmer Rouge photo exhibition opens in Cambodia

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.

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.