Swedish man who dined with Khmer Rouge’s Pol Pot 40 years ago: I regret it
- Communist Gunnar Bergstrom visited Cambodia in 1978 at the tail end of its rule, after being inspired by the Khmer Rouge’s vision of utopia
- He was taken on a sanitised tour around the country, and even had dinner with the regime’s leader – a period of his life he is now documenting in a book
Gunnar Bergstrom, then 27 years old, was one of the many Swedes who protested the Vietnam war in the 1970s – an era in which he became increasingly disillusioned with Soviet communism.
Turning his attention to Cambodia, which he viewed as having been liberated from the capitalist Americans, Bergstrom created a students’ friendship association with the aim of helping the Khmer Rouge to spread its ideals.
The communist regime, which ruled between 1975 and 1979, presided over one of the worst mass murders in the 20th century. It is estimated around 2 million people – a quarter of Cambodia’s total population – were killed by the Khmer Rouge.
Gunnar says he and his associates heard some stories of the atrocities through refugees. But, consumed by ideology at the time, “we did not want to believe them”.
