The Sweden–Kampuchea Friendship Association was founded in 1976 as part of associations against the
Vietnam War. It was influenced by the Maoist
Communist Workers' Party of Sweden and other pro–Khmer Rouge organizations in
Denmark and
Norway.
Visit to Kampuchea In August 1978, members of the organization visited Democratic Kampuchea for 14 days. They met with
Pol Pot and
Ieng Sary. Among them were the chairperson Hedvig Ekerwald, Gunnar Bergström, the editor of the magazine
Kampuchea,
Jan Myrdal, the son of
Gunnar and
Alva Myrdal, and Marita Wikander, who was married to a
Khmer Rouge diplomat who had been stationed in
East Germany before he was recalled to Cambodia. During their visit, they would have a lavish dinner with Pol Pot. Wikander asked their hosts if she could see her husband, but her request was denied. Unbeknownst to her, her husband had been executed by the Khmer Rouge after his return to Cambodia in 1977, one year earlier. Her son would later find records of his death at
Tuol Sleng. At that time, aged 27, Bergström believed that the reports about overwork, starvation, and mass killings in Cambodia were just "Western propaganda." The four saw "smiling peasants" and a society on its way to become "an ideal society". When they came back to Sweden, they "undertook a speaking tour and wrote articles in support of the Democratic Kampuchea regime." In a speech with high school students in Phnom Penh on 12 September 2016, he recommended that everybody should learn history. == See also ==