Perhaps even more than the Tiananmen Square controversy, Myrdal's position in Swedish public life suffered from his defense of Pol Pot's regime in Democratic Kampuchea. Although he argued that national wars of liberation and peasant rebellions were intrinsically brutal affairs, in which many Cambodians had undoubtedly perished, he dismissed depictions of the regime's purges as a genocide and continued to refer to senior Khmer Rouge leaders as friends and political allies until his death.Svenska Dagbladet 19 July 2007, editorial blog: 80 år att minnasPeter Fröberg Idling: Pol Pots Lächeln. Eine schwedische Reise durch das Kambodscha der Roten Khmer. Büchergilde Gutenberg, Frankfurt am Main 2013. .Joscha Schmierer: Unbeschreibliche Brutalität, verblüffende Inkompetenz. Pol Pot und die europäische Solidarität: Ein Überlebender und ein Zeitzeuge beschreiben das Terror-Regime der Roten Khmer. In: FAZ vom 1. Juli 2013, S. 28.
