Tracking East Timor and Cambodia coverage in google books

It's been pointed out that two genocides, in East Timor and Cambodia, received quite different levels of attention in the Western media. The new google ngram tool allows that to be checked against coverage in the many English-language books scanned by google. The result? Much more coverage of the genocide in Cambodia; a little notice for East Timor after the invasion in 1975; climbing coverage in the 1990s from the Santa Cruz massacre (November 1991) to the independence referendum (August 1999); and a spike in interest early this decade, with interest falling off since the restoration of independence (May 2002).

Results in the smaller French-language search (no options yet for Indonesian, Portuguese or Tetun) are similar:

Images: the photos of Elaine Briere

Until the end of the 1980s, East Timor was a closed "daerah operasi militer" (military operations zone) and access was heavily restricted. Little information and less even fewer images reached the outside world. The role of photographs of pre-invasion East Timor taken in 1974 by British Columbia resident Elaine Briere therefore became important.

In 2000, Elaine Briere returned to an independent East Timor and added an epilogue to her 1974 photos. Selections from both trips are reproduced in "East Timor Testimony."

Click here to visit Elaine Briere's photography home page

Click here to buy the book from publisher Between the Lines or read more