Wartime Journalists Remember Fallen Comrades

INTRO: More than three decades ago Cambodia endured civil war. And so did some of the western journalists that covered it.

H.E. Khieu Kanharith (front, left) leads a group of foreign
journalists to Wat Po, Kg. Speu province, Feb 5, 2013.

In fact more than 30 western journalists died covering the fighting here.

This week, some of the western journalists who survived paid tribute to their fallen comrades.

STORY: A pagoda in Po Ang-Krang commune, Borset district, Kampong Speu province.

It’s roughly 60 kilometers southwest of the capital Phnom Penh. It was the place where eight foreign journalists and a Cambodian colleague were killed while covering the war in the early 1970s.

A memorial stone is erected in Kg. Speu province
in memory of the fallen journalists.

More than thirty years on, their surviving friends came to visit them. Cambodia’s Information Minister Excellency Khieu Kanharith led a group of foreign journalists to the area to pay respects to their fallen colleagues.

 According to the minister, more than thirty local and foreign journalists were killed in the early 1970s while covering the war in Cambodia.

A western veteran journalist places an incense stick near the
memorial stone.

SOUNDBITE – H.E. Khieu Kanharith, Minister of Information: “During the war time from 1970 to 1975, 37 journalists were killed. We can say it was a war of a more ferocious nature if compared to that in Vietnam. During the Vietnam war from 1965 to 1975, the death toll of journalists was less than that for Cambodia.” 

In memory of all those fallen journalists, a stupa has been erected in the capital Phnom Penh. And all their names have been inscribed on that memorial stupa.

 
Source: The Cambodian News Channel (CNC)