***WARNING! There are some graphic details in this post.***
Yesterday my team and I visited the S-21 prison and just one of the over 300 killing fields where people were executed after being tortured into giving false confessions. I came to Cambodia with an awareness that genocide was part of the nation’s history, but after learning more, my heart has been broken afresh for the people of this country.
I saw pictures of people who were beaten and tortured. I heard stories of how people were forced into manual labor that reminded me of the slavery of the Israelites under the Egyptians. They were forced to produce an unreasonable quota every day, which left some working 19 hour days. People were driver from their homes in the cities to work in the fields. Their educational and religious buildings were turned into prisons. Their captors liked to torture them to the brink of death, but they were always upset if they weren’t able to revive their victim because that meant they couldn’t get the confession they were after.
They saved death for the killing fields. They would bring their victims out in trucks, and they would use different instruments to inflict head wounds before throwing them into a mass grave. In order to hide these atrocities, they would hang a loudspeaker from a tree and play music to drown out the sounds of death. There was another tree they used as well. It was called the killing tree. This is where they would take infants by the legs and smash their skulls against the trunk before tossing them in one of the graves like they were throwing out the garbage. This was to ensure that the children never grew up to exact revenge for the pain inflicted upon their families.
By the time we were done yesterday, I had no words. What is there to say after you see something like that?
After becoming more aware of the horrors this country has endured, I would expect a nation who has endured so much to show signs of hopelessness or scars of despair. Instead I see hope everywhere I go. I see it in the smiles of those old enough to remember the past as they watch children play naked in the streets. I see it in people who fled, but have since returned because they want to build a better future rather than let Cambodia be defined by its past. I see it in the restoration of old buildings to their original purpose. A place that was once a high school was turned into a prison under the Khmer Rouge. Today it is again being used to educate people who come from around the world on the unspeakable realities of genocide. I see it as these people reclaim their future from those who tried to destroy it.
How? How is this possible? This isn’t the first genocide in world history. Tragically, it has happened so many times before. How do people who know that the world keeps repeating this cycle choosing to move on with hope that things don’t have to be that way. I think it’s the image of God in us. I think hope is something He marked us with when He was writing out our DNA.
God has hope for humanity. He endured His own killing tree where He experienced just how brutal we can be. And yet, He still has hope for us. That is exactly why He came. He wanted to show us what it looks like to endure such unspeakable violence and forgive rather than exacting revenge. That is how there can be hope. That is how we can move forward again and again believing that one day God will bring restoration and healing and the world will again be as He intended. Even now, the process has begun. God is presently at work to set things right. Because of this, we can actually have hope. I leave you with Hebrews 10:23 (NASB).
Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.
