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Jessica Murray
Sunday December 31, 2023
John Pilger pictured in 2020. Throughout his career, Pilger was a strong critic of western foreign policy. Photograph: Ki Price/Getty Images
The Australian journalist and documentary film-maker John Pilger has died aged 84, his family have announced.
A statement posted to his account on X said: “It is with great sadness the family of John Pilger announce he died yesterday 30 December 2023 in London aged 84.
“His journalism and documentaries were celebrated around the world, but to his family he was simply the most amazing and loved Dad, Grandad and partner. Rest In Peace.”
Throughout his career, Pilger was a strong critic of western foreign policy and his native country’s treatment of Indigenous Australians.
In his last column for the Guardian, in 2015, he condemned how “aboriginal people are to be driven from homelands where their communities have lived for thousands of years”.
Born in Bondi, New South Wales, Pilger relocated to the UK in the 1960s, where he went on to work for the Daily Mirror, ITV’s former investigative programme World in Action and Reuters.
He covered conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Biafra, and was named journalist of the year in 1967 and 1979. Pilger had a successful career in documentary film-making, creating more than 50 films and winning a number of accolades includes honours at the Baftas.
In 1979, the ITV film Year Zero: The Silent Death Of Cambodia revealed the extent of the ruling Khmer Rouge’s crimes. Pilger won an Emmy award for his 1990 follow-up ITV documentary, Cambodia: The Betrayal.
Pilger also made the 1974 ITV documentary 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.
Kevin Lygo, the managing director of media and entertainment at ITV, said: “John was a giant of campaigning journalism. He had a clear, distinctive editorial voice which he used to great effect throughout his distinguished filmmaking career. His documentaries were engaging, challenging and always very watchable.
“He eschewed comfortable consensus and instead offered a radical, alternative approach on current affairs and a platform for dissenting voices over 50 years.
“John’s films gave viewers analysis and opinion often not seen elsewhere in the television mainstream. It was a contribution that greatly added to the rich plurality of British television.
“Our thoughts and condolences are with John’s family, friends and colleagues at this sad time.”
Pilger’s last film, The Dirty War on the National Health Service, was released in 2019 and examined the threat to the NHS from privatisation and bureaucracy. It was described by the Guardian’s film critic Peter Bradshaw as “a fierce, necessary film”.
Pilger was a vocal supporter of the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, and visited him in the Ecuador embassy in London where he sought asylum after facing charges related to the publication of thousands of classified documents.
The former Pink Floyd musician Roger Waters, who has also supported Assange, said of Pilger: “I miss you my friend, what a great man you were. We will carry you in our hearts forever, you will always be there to give us strength. Love R.”
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