This note from a reader showed up in my inbox:

I know you're interested in this stuff so here's a link to a story about the Cambodia genocide...which happened to be the one I was reading right as I got called into the meeting where I got laid off from my media job today but that's a whole other post...
 
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/13/sbm.cambodia.ponchaud/index.html

The story is about Francois Ponchaud, a French priest who went to Cambodia in 1965. The Khmer Rouge would expel him and all other foreigners after they took control of the country on  April 17, 1975. That date would mark the start of "Year Zero," the restart date of history.

Hanoi would fall to Vietnam within two weeks, and after that, the world forgot about southeast Asia -- even though the horror was just getting going in Cambodia. Ponchaud tried to tell the world, but no one listened, let alone cared.

In 1976, angered by inaccuracies in Le Monde's reporting on the Khmer Rouge, Ponchaud fired off a letter to the newspaper's editor -- along with a dossier of refugee accounts and radio transmissions. He was contacted immediately and asked to write for the newspaper. His articles were published in February 1976. Watch Ponchaud tell the Le Monde story »

Though few accounts of Cambodia's nightmare were appearing in the press, the U.S. government was receiving frequent briefings about what was happening there. In a meeting in November 1975, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger acknowledged the brutality of the Khmer Rouge. But he also knew that they shared an enemy with the U.S. -- Vietnam.

"Tell the Cambodians that we will be friends with them," Kissinger told an official in the region, according to a declassified State Department account. The Khmer Rouge "are murderous thugs," he said, "but we won't let that stand in our way." Read Kissinger's words in the declassified State Department document (pdf)

By 1977, the Khmer Rouge had been in power for two years, and much of the world remained unaware or uninterested. Many who did hear accounts of Khmer Rouge brutality found them hard to believe. Even prominent liberals and intellectuals doubted that a supposedly egalitarian peasant movement would perpetrate such horrors on their own people. ...

Ponchaud then published a startling book called "Year Zero." It was one of the first to expose the brutal totalitarian regime of the Khmer Rouge to the world. Still, no help came for Cambodia.

"I was pretty frustrated," he said. "The governments did not react. You know, countries don't defend human rights. They are always subservient to politics."  ...

Vietnam invaded Cambodia in December 1978, ending the Khmer Rouge's hold on power, but ushering in an era of unrest that would last into the 1990s.

The world would finally start to see that all Ponchaud had said was true. More than 2 million Cambodians were dead. The scope of the catastrophe quickly became clear. In the fall of 1979, Carter responded, raising $32 million to help the refugees.

Today, Ponchaud is back in Cambodia, continuing his efforts for the Cambodian people, building schools, holding Mass and working on local projects. Often referred to as "the friend of the Cambodians," he is considered an expert on the country. But this time he has no illusions.

"No one defends human rights," he said. "Governments are cold beasts looking out for their own interests."

CNN's Christiane Amanpour has a special at 9 p.m. ET on Thursday entitled "Scream Bloody Murder," which is about those who tried to warn about genocide, but were ignored.

Canada's Romeo D'Allaire, a Canadian general in charge of a doomed effort in Rwanda, will be one of the subject.

Producer Ken Shiffman kept a journal of his time in Cambodia doing research for the special.