After Iran, Code Pink To Also Visit “Much Maligned” Khmer Rouge Cambodia

“We intend to showcase the enlightened, beautiful side of the Killing Fields.”

Credit: Leon Petrosyan via Wikimedia Commons

Washington, D.C., January 14 – Leaders of the activist organization Code Pink: Women for Peace announced this week that following their trip to the Islamic Republic of Iran to help counteract the negative image the regime has suffered in Western depictions, the group will conduct similar activities in Democratic Kampuchea, where the ruling party has experienced analogous public image struggles amid reaction to its genocide of nearly a quarter of the population.

Code Pink posted its intentions on Twitter and other social media over the weekend. Later this month the movement, which styles itself a “grassroots peace and social justice movement working to end U.S.-funded wars and occupations, to challenge militarism globally and to redirect our resources into health care, education, green jobs and other life-affirming activities,” will take an organized tour of Iran, the world’s current leading state sponsor of terrorism and practitioner of imperialism, colonialism, and ethnic cleansing, but that’s OK because it’s not the U.S. doing it. Negative characterizations of the mullahs’ policies in Iran reminded numerous Code Pink figures of “demonizing” coverage of Kampuchea’s agricultural collectivization program in the 1970’s, in which millions of people died of starvation, mass murder, torture, disease, forced labor, and other ills. Democratic Kampuchea served as Cambodia’s official name under 1975-79 Khmer Rouge rule.

Activist Ariel Elyse Gold remarked of the upcoming Cambodia trip, “We have a responsibility to amplify voices other than the ones Donald Trump and Bibi Netanyahu want you to hear. Much like the brouhaha surrounding the supposed repression and economic collapse in Venezuela, all the statistics you hear about Kampuchea are lies, Western propaganda. We intend to showcase the enlightened, beautiful side of the Killing Fields that most mainstream media audiences never get to see.”

Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot is scheduled to greet the Code Pink mission in person. Spokesman Ampeu Braly Pouchsasa told journalists in the capital Phnom Penh that the group will tour some of the less well-known sites in the country, which is much less crowded than it was in 1974. “We think they will especially enjoy our efficient use of pickaxes, blunt objects, and other tools to dispatch of political opponents, rather than rely on materials we must import, such as bullets,” he predicted. “Self-sufficiency has always been our goal, and we know Code Pink is on the same page as we are when it comes to not relying on goods and services that the corrupt Americans might manage to choke off with evil sanctions. Just look at Iran.”

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