Transcribing the Past

 This poster was circulated throughout the 1980s and called on the UK government to renounce official support for the government in exile ran by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. That the United Kingdom and the United States of America and the People's Republic of China and most of the rest of the world supported Pol Pot even after the news of the massacres and mass starvation became well known often surprises many.  The reason is geopolitics, all these powers including Thailand who allowed Pol Pot and his fellow ringleaders to rule refugee camps and continue their civil war in a devastated and exhausted Cambodia were concerned with checking the power of a triumphant Vietnam, which was expanded its influence in neighbouring Laos and its close relationship with the Soviet Union was seen as an existential threat towards the People's Republic. Simply put, no one in power cared about the average Cambodian, they were expendable.  After the 1979 declaration of war on Vietnam backfir...

        Declaration    By the Central Board of the Bulgarian Esperantist Association.   Bulgarian Esperantists have just learnt of the invasion by the Chinese army into the territory of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam with great anger and indigination.  This insidious attack by fascist means shook all honest people throughout the world and has only brought joy to reactionaries. There is no evidence of any provocation by the Vietnamese people against Chinese territory. But there are other facts. They speak of China's relentless pressure on the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. This pressure began immediately after the total failue of US aggression in Vietnam. This pressure is exerted because of the ambitions of the Chinese party and state leadership to impose hegemony. China wishes to be supreme in South East Asia, and because of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam's allegiance to its socialist ideals, the socialist community, and the Sov...