Take inspiration from Pilger

Tribute to a journalist who always spoke truth to power

- AVRIL MEYLER

SOME of you may have encountered John Pilger long before you were discovered the great deceptions of the world.

The term 'conspiracy theorist' was unknown to me when I began to look towards Pilger, a lone voice of truth in the days before the internet became a source of news.

Pilger, who died last December, spent years reporting from across the world in some of the most dangerous locations.

He showed the suffering of victims in far-flung places, away from the UK, governments, UN and various aid agencies, who stood by from the comfort of their offices, making judgements of whether to give or withhold aid - basing their decisions on the politics and power behind the scenes.

Or as ever in the case of the U.S. and the UK - when and how many bombs should be dropped/funded. I watch the current horror unfold in Gaza, and then watched The War You Don't See.

Despairingly, nothing changes. This was filmed in 1979, shortly after the Khmer Rouge were ousted by the Vietnamese.

In 2011, my eyes were opened in Phnom Penh, as I visited the very same sites referred to by Pilger in this groundbreaking documentary, and again later, as I visited the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

The U.S. created Pol Pot, and they bombed Vietnam back to the stone age. I have met third-generation Vietnamese children and adults who are disabled and disfigured, as a direct result of their parents and grandparents inhaling Agent Orange.