[ad_1]
Colleagues of the late Nate Thayer paid tribute to a “fearless” American journalist who went “additional than all of us” in his seek for solutions about Khmer Rouge atrocities in Cambodia.
“He was fearless by way of his work type, and he was uncompromising in terms of pursuing the reality,” mentioned Ker Munthit, who labored with Thayer at The Phnom Penh Publish within the Nineties.
“Frequently, he scooped the world together with his tales on Cambodian political conflicts,” Munthit informed VOA shortly after Thayer’s loss of life in early January at 62.
Thayer arrived in Southeast Asia within the late Nineteen Eighties and labored as a stringer for The Related Press. Over the following decade, he established himself together with his protection of the tip of the Khmer Rouge regime and the emergence of “trendy” Cambodia.
No collection of scoops was larger than Thayer’s reporting on the trial of Cambodian dictator Pol Pot in 1997 and his interview with the previous chief a couple of months later. However he additionally broke tales on renegade combatants, heroin trafficking networks linked to Cambodia’s elite, and factional preventing that noticed tanks return to the streets of Phnom Penh after a couple of years of relative peace.
Thayer was a pointy author — submitting prolonged dispatches for publications together with the Far Japanese Financial Assessment. However his sources have been what actually set him aside.
“He went additional than all of us,” Kevin Barrington, an Irish journalist who labored with Thayer at The Phnom Penh Publish, informed VOA in a telephone name. “He’d go off on critical treks deep into Cambodia with guerillas. He had an urge for food for danger.”
Thayer practically died throughout a type of journeys. In October 1989, the car he was in drove over two mines. The driving force was killed, and Thayer suffered shrapnel wounds.
However he survived and stored protecting the battle, pushed by a mission to trace down the person who led the Khmer Rouge because it murdered and starved to loss of life some 3 million Cambodians throughout its four-year reign within the Seventies.
“Though he did many issues in Cambodia, he by no means deviated from that mission that he needed to discover Pol Pot. And that was an entire obsession,” Nayan Chanda, former editor of the Far Japanese Financial Assessment, informed VOA.
The breakthrough got here in 1997 when Brother No. 1, as Pol Pot was known as, was arrested by rival Khmer Rouge commander Ta Mok. Thayer, together with tv cameraman David McKaige, was invited to doc the present trial that adopted.
The trial was the primary time the infamous conflict legal had been seen by the Western world in a long time. Thayer’s footage was broadcast on ABC Information’ “Nightline” — starting a yearslong authorized dispute over rights.
Just a few months later, Pol Pot, who might barely stroll with out assist, reached out by way of intermediaries to rearrange an interview, Chanda recalled.
Thayer wrote for the Assessment that Pol Pot was “chillingly unrepentant,” keen to confess to “errors” made by the regime however blaming mass killings on others and arguing that have been it not for his revolution, Cambodia would have change into a part of Vietnam.
That was the dictator’s final interview earlier than his loss of life the following yr — which Thayer additionally scooped.
McKaige usually teamed with Thayer on reporting journeys into western Cambodia and alongside the Thai border, the place democratic resistance forces — aligned with Khmer Rouge remnants towards Hun Sen’s Hanoi-backed authorities — primarily based their operations.
Now residing in Singapore, McKaige informed VOA that Thayer was a uncommon foreigner who didn’t convey a political agenda to his work in Cambodia throughout a time when the nation was a flashpoint for geopolitical tensions.
“I believe he supplied some stability to an in any other case extraordinarily left-liberal view of what occurred in Cambodia,” McKaige mentioned. “Each decisions have been dangerous.”
And among the hardest fighters in Cambodia’s a long time of conflict opened as much as Thayer.
“He’s an extremely open and genuine individual, and that openness is reciprocated when he talks to folks,” McKaige mentioned.
Barrington, who later labored for Agence France-Presse in Phnom Penh, informed VOA that Thayer’s relationships together with his Khmer Rouge sources made a few of his colleagues uncomfortable. At occasions, different reporters felt he was too delicate on senior leaders when he scored uncommon interviews with them, similar to former head of state Khieu Samphan.
“However I believe this was all a part of his uber plan to attempt to get to Pol Pot,” Barrington mentioned. “When he did get to Pol Pot, he did not again away from asking him robust questions.”
Thayer labored arduous and performed arduous, associates mentioned. He usually shared an anecdote about charging The Related Press practically $500 for gin and tonics, arguing it was a medical expense given the antimalarial quinine within the tonic.
However ingesting would change into a demon.
“Anyone who did the stuff we did and continues to do it within the spirit of making an attempt to convey horrible issues to the world’s consideration [is] at all times going to be a bit tough across the edges,” McKaige mentioned.
Thayer would go on to report from all over the world, together with Iraq, the previous Yugoslavia, Cuba and North Korea. Extra not too long ago, he returned to residing in the USA.
Munthit recalled visiting him at his U.S. farmhouse within the early 2000s. He mentioned Thayer slept till early night, woke as much as feed the geese in a close-by pond, and spent the night time engaged on his unfinished memoir, “Sympathy for the Satan.”
Un Sokhom, a former writer of an opposition newspaper in Cambodia, mentioned the nation had misplaced a uncommon residing witness to the person who oversaw the bloodbath of so many.
“We’re very unhappy that the concepts and additional publication that he wrote and ready for launch haven’t been launched. Will probably be buried,” he mentioned.
Barrington mentioned Thayer’s associates are discussing how they will end the ebook that he by no means accomplished.
This story originated in VOA’s Khmer Service. Sok Khemara contributed.
[ad_2]
Source link
