VNA’s journalists recall hectic reporting from Cambodia

Hanoi (VNA) – Officials, experts, journalists, and technicians of the Vietnam News Agency (VNA) who worked through different periods in Cambodia met on January 7, recalling the memorable time of hectic reporting from the neighbouring country.

Addressing the get-together at the VNA’s headquarters in Hanoi, VNA General Director Nguyen Duc Loi said in late 1978, a group of nearly 30 officials, journalists, telegraphers, and drivers of the VNA headed to Cambodia to report the joint struggle of volunteer Vietnamese soldiers and Cambodian army and people against the Pol Pot genocidal regime.

Between 1978 and 1988, the VNA officials and experts wholeheartedly assisted the building of the Cambodian News Agency - SPK (now AKP), he said, adding that hundreds of VNA leaders, reporters, editors, officials, technicians, and drivers were sent to AKP to help the agency with professional skills, apparatus organisation and technical equipment. 

They surmounted hardships to contribute to writing “golden pages” in history of the VNA, Loi noted.

VNA’s former General Director Tran Mai Huong recalled the VNA’s support for the preparation of the birth of the SPK on December 3, 1978, which carried news and photos on the establishment of the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation a day earlier.

At the same time, the VNA dispatched reporters and technicians to battlefields in Cambodia to cover the fight, he said, noting that the agency continued to aid its Cambodian counterpart in reporting, technical infrastructure and personnel training after January 7, 1979.

“The VNA’s history should devote a chapter to international duties, including those carried out in Laos and Cambodia. We are happy and proud to contribute to that glorious historic chapter,” said former VNA General Director Nguyen Quoc Uy, who was VNA correspondent in Cambodia in the 1980s.-VNA