While in the Phnom Phen, we were able to tour the city and learn a bit of the history of Cambodia.
It is hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that only 30 years ago a genocide occurred here … but what is more astonishing is the fact that I had
never even heard about it.
The Khmer Rouge … the Killing Fields … 1975-1979 over 2 million Cambodians murdered.
In his insanity and drive towards creating a Communist Cambodia, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, killed off anyone in his way – the educated class
and their families, doctors, teachers, students, engineers, Buddhist monks, foreigners, etc.
He believed that by having an uneducated mass of followers, he could more easily create a working class which would help to establish the Communistic “equal” society that he dreamed of for Cambodia.
It’s all just
REALLY messed up.
We were able to visit the S-21 center where approximately 20,000 Cambodians were imprisoned, tortured, and killed.
The statistics say that of the thousands of citizens who entered S-21, only 7 survived.
The sick part of it all … the center is directly in the center of the city and was once a high school before Pol Pot and his regime transformed it into a killing center.
Makeshift wooden and brick cells in the classrooms, cruel torture methods, bar on the windows, barbed wire across the length of the school buildings.
It’s like a
terrible, unbelievable nightmare.
There were rooms and rooms of snapshots of the prisoners killed at S-21.
Apparently the center kept incredible records of the men, women, and children who were funneled through there.
This included mug shots with their numbers on their chests and the many pages of “confessions” that were extracted out of the innocent prisoners.
We spent several hours at the center.
It was all overwhelming to take in.
It was hard to understand how we can as human beings continue to do such appalling things.
And that we sit thousands of miles distanced from it and don’t even know that it is occurring.
And that we don’t intervene when we
DO know it’s happening.
It all gets really messy, I understand … but 2 million people in the span of 4 years is a high price to pay for our ignorance, blind eye and politically “neutral” stance.
After the museum, we visited one of the actual “Killing Fields.”
The Khmer Rouge would transport truckloads of Cambodians to these locations for either death or burial.
The site is currently the location of a monument to the victims.
I would ask that you would respectfully read what information that you can from these photographs and consider looking up more information about the tragedy of the Khmer Rouge and the Killing Fields.
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It’s hard to let myself be opened up to tragedy and evil of such proportions.
To see the things that I have seen just in the past 5 weeks.
There’s a difference in knowing about issues or events .. and actually seeing and experiencing them first hand.
At times it is very difficult to have faith and believe that there really is a God out there somewhere big enough to handle all that I’ve seen.
And while it’s hard to grasp, I have honestly come to believe that
all of this is for a purpose.
Because the Lord does
not desire His children’s eyes to remain closed.
He does
not desire His church to remain sheltered.
He does
not desire His kingdom or His people to remain uninformed, ineffective, or insensitive.
There is a reason that my life has come in contact with all of this … and there are reasons that I have the ability to pass on what I have seen to
YOU.
If the Kingdom of God is to COME, it requires MOVEMENT.
It requires action.
And I really believe that our role in the Kingdom coming begins with seeing and feeling and experiencing ALL that this world entails.
It begins with being informed and letting issues affect us.
It begins when hearts are invested.
It begins when we REALLY start becoming the hands and feet of God in a world that so desperately needs His touch.
It begins when we
can’t help but do anything else.
Because we can no longer turn our eyes.
And we can’t forget what we’ve seen.
Know that I love each and every one of you reading this right now.
I am so proud to know so many who will
really read this and for whom I know it will mean something.
I am blessed to have all of you in my life.
Love.
