The executions behind Andrew Peacock’s Cambodia crusade

The late politician’s principled stand against murderous dictator Pol Pot in the late 1970s would forever change the way Australia deals with foreign regimes.

Two Australians were captured in 1978 and tortured to death by the Khmer Rouge at the Tuol Sleng security prison, which is now a genocide museum. Getty

John McGlue

Apr 30, 2021 – 12.00am

Email LinkedIn Twitter Facebook

Subscribe to gift this article

Gift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe.

Subscribe now

Already a subscriber?

It was an unlikely setting for a bust-up between an Australian prime minister and his foreign minister. En route to New Delhi for a meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government in September 1980, Andrew Peacock presented Malcolm Fraser with compelling evidence that two young Australians, David Scott and Ron Dean, had been tortured to death by the Khmer Rouge in what was then known as Kampuchea.

It was, argued Peacock, reason enough for Fraser to finally support derecognition of the Pol Pot regime, increasingly accepted as a bunch of war criminals presiding over atrocities on a breathtaking scale.