LONDON: Australian-born investigative journalist and documentary maker John Pilger, known for his support for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his coverage of the aftermath of Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia and the Thalidomide scandal, has died in London, his family said Sunday.

Pilger, who had mostly lived in Britain since the early 1960s, had worked for Reuters, Britain’s left-wing Daily Mirror and commercial channel ITV’s former investigative programme 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 his 1990s follow-up ITV documentary Cambo­dia: The Betrayal.

Pilger also made the 1974 documentary for ITV called Thalidomide: The Ninety-Eight We Forgot, about the campaign for compensation for children after concerns were raised about birth defects when expectant mothers took the drug.

He received Bafta’s Richard Dimbleby Award for factual reporting in 1991.

Published in Dawn, january 1st, 2024