A few months before the World Race, I read the book First They Killed My Father, about the horrible civil war and genocide that took place in Cambodia, and this country has been heavy on my heart ever since. Our second to last night in Kampong Cham we watched the movie, The Killing Fields together as a team. It broke our hearts that this country we love so much experienced such atrocities in recent history.
From 1975-1979, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge tortured and killed almost 2 million Cambodians. A quarter of Cambodia's population died in one of the worst genocides in the 20th century. Before I read the book, I had never even heard about what had happened here. I think Americans, myself included, are often ignorant about what's going on in other parts of the world. I would highly recommend to each of you to either read the book or watch the movie The Killing Fields.
On Wednesday we took a field trip to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Before 1975 it was a high school, but Pol Pot turned it into a torture prison. Of the estimated 17,000 prisoners, (2,000 children) that went through the notorious S-21 torture prison, only seven survived. The leader of that prison was ONLY Khmer Rouge leader to be on trial for the horrific crimes committed.
(A former classroom used as a prison cell where prisoners would be interrogated and tortured).
The Pol Pot regime wanted to create a farming, communist country, where there was no education, no religion, medicine, no currency, no private property and no cities. Anyone who was a teacher, doctor, any type of government official, basically anyone who was educated, was killed. The majority of the population was forced into the countryside where they worked 14-16 hours a day in the rice fields, surviving on one cup of rice a day.
95% of Christians were killed during the four years the Khmer Rouge held power.
It is horrifying to me that human beings can be this cruel. I can't believe that this happened only 30 years ago, and there's genocides just like this one still going on in the world today.
The Chueung Ek Genocidal Center is on the site of one of the biggest killing fields in the country. Prisoners were brought here by the truckload to be bruatally executed and dumped in mass graves. At the time of liberation over 160 mass graves were found in these fields.
Please pray that God would continue to restore Cambodia.
