Cambodia watching down under / Geoffrey C. Gunn, Jefferson Lee

BCB061

Cambodia watching down under / Geoffrey C. Gunn, Jefferson Lee

a-cb---

xxx, 328 pages, ill., 22 cm

Bangkok, Thailand, Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University, 1991

0; IAS monographs. no. 047

Includes bibliographical references (p. 325-328)

Gunn, Geoff

Lee, Jefferson

A critical view of Western scholarship and journalism on Cambodia since 1975. Gunn and Lee seek to situate their work with the tradition of Herman and Chomsky but rather serve up an odd mixture of cop ious collection of data on events and their reporting together with tendentious, sometimes bombastic assertions, throwaway lines and cheap shots. Identifying the real problem of Cambodia as "Vietnam's invasion and occupation of Cambodia in Jan 1979" Gunn and Lee downplay if not deny the genocide by the Khmer Rouge, merely alluding in passing to "internal developments of Cambodia between 1975 and 1 979 including the human loss stemming from either disease, famine, purge or conflict." Somehow this reality has passed Gunn and Lee by, as did the establishment of PRK on the 7/1/79, missed from their chronology of events which meticulously records the visit of one of the authors to Siem Reap in 1988. The book has no index and very sloppy proof reading, but it does gather together a valuable colle ction of media statements on Cambodia in the Australian press in recent years, as well as being itself a part of the polemic. (H.J.)

© DC-Cam