Twenty-five years ago tomorrow, the Khmer Rouge army emerged from Cambodia's thick jungles to take control of the country, signalling the start of a brutal, tragic era.
At 9am on April 17, Maoist guerrillas marched into Phnom Penh to be welcomed with joy, as it appeared a bitter civil war was over. But Phnom Penh residents' delusions about the Khmer Rouge lasted only a few hours.
Shortly after their arrival, the 'liberators' began to oust the population and channel them into the countryside, sparking a disaster that shocked the world in its brutality.
PHOTO: AL ROCKOFF
Over the next three years, eight months and 20 hours, until their ouster in 1979 by Vietnamese troops, Pol Pot's minions decimated Cambodia, killing as many as 1.5 million men and women, destroying the education system, and setting the country's development back decades.
History has shown that April 17 was the beginning of the descent into Cambodia's nightmare. And to document the tragedy on that first day was the legendary `Newsweek' and 'New York Times' photographer Al Rockoff.
But much of Rockoff's brilliant work from that time has never before appeared in print, and today, on the eve of the 25th anniversary of Year Zero, the 'Taipei Times' exclusively publishes many of the photographs the 'New York Times' did not see fit to print.
In our story inside, Rockoff explains to the Taipei Times why that was so, and reveals his disdain for the 1980s film, 'The Killing Fields;' the film that immortalized on the silver screen both Rockoff (played in the film by John Malkovich) and 'New York Times' correspondent Sidney Schanberg.
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