Source: AFP
Australian-born investigative journalist and documentarian John Pilger, known for his support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his coverage of the fallout from the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia and the Thalidomide scandal, has died in London, his family said Sunday. .
Pilger, who had lived mostly in Britain since the early 1960s, had worked at Reuters, Britain’s left-wing Daily Mirror and ITV’s former investigative program World In Action.
In 1979, the ITV film “Year Zero: The Silent Death Of Cambodia” revealed the extent of the Khmer Rouge’s crimes, and Pilger won an International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences award for the 1990s ITV documentary “Cambodia: The Betrayal”. “.
Pilger also made the 1974 ITV documentary Thalidomide: The Ninety-Eight We Forgot, about the campaign for compensation for children following concerns about birth defects when expectant mothers took the drug.
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He received the Bafta’s Richard Dimbleby Award for Factual Reporting in 1991.
“It is with great sadness that the family of John Pilger announce that he passed away yesterday, December 30, 2023 in London at the age of 84,” X posted.
“His journalism and documentaries were celebrated around the world, but to his family he was just the most amazing and loving dad, grandad and partner. Rest in peace.”
Kevin Lygo, managing director of media and entertainment at ITV, called Pilger “a giant of campaign journalism”.
He has always “shunned the comfortable consensus” in favor of a “platform for dissenting voices for 50 years,” he said.
Pilger also campaigned for the release of WikiLeaks founder Assange, who has been embroiled in a long battle against extradition to the United States, and raised his bail.
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Former Pink Floyd musician Roger Waters paid tribute, calling him a “friend” and a “great man”.
“Truth in power”
In X, WikiLeaks called Piltzer a “brutal truth-to-power speaker who in subsequent years tirelessly advocated for the release and vindication of Julian Assange.”
During his career, Pilger made a number of comments criticizing American and British foreign policy and the treatment of Indigenous Australians.
Former British Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn wrote in X that he had given “a voice to the unheard and the occupied: in Australia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Chile, Iraq, East Timor, Palestine and beyond. of truth — will never be forgotten.”
Pilger has also expressed controversial views on Russia and its president Vladimir Putin.
In 2018, Pilger called the assassination attempt on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, his daughter Yulia and a former police officer in the UK a “carefully constructed drama” in an interview with Russia Today (RT).
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The UK government and Scotland Yard believe members of a Russian military intelligence group carried out the attack in south-west England.
Pilger told RT: “This is a carefully crafted drama as part of a propaganda campaign that has been building for several years now to justify the actions of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), Britain and the United States against of Russia. an event.”
In 2014, he also told The Guardian that “Putin is the only leader who condemns the rise of fascism in 21st-century Europe”, and last year he spoke to The South China Morning Post about skepticism about reports of the invasion of Ukraine from Russia.
His most recent documentaries included “The Coming War On China”, broadcast in 2016 on ITV.
Source: AFP