Warning: This Blog contains material that is not suitable for children.
When we first got to Cambodia, I heard that over 50% of the population was UNDER 30 years old… now I know why.
This month my team and I are staying in a small fishing village outside of Siem Reap, Cambodia called Pouk. It is in the northern part of Cambodia, about 2 hours from the boarder. I love it here, it is peaceful, the people are friendly and the kids are so eager to learn English. It didn’t always look like this, though. A little over 30 years ago, Cambodia was being tormented by a group called the Kumar Rouge. They wanted to preserve the small, rice growing, fishing communities throughout Cambodia, so they decided that everyone who wanted to change Cambodia and make it grow (such as educated people, doctors, etc.) needed to be removed. How would they go about doing this? Mass genocide.
My team and I had to travel about 6 hours south to the capital Phnom Penh to apply for our India and Vietnam visas. While we were there, we went to visit the Killing Fields. This is where people from all over Cambodia were taken to be brutally murdered if they resisted the Kumar Rouge or if they were educated. It doesn’t stop there. Not only were the educated individuals taken, but also their families, including children. They did not want the kids of educated people to grow knowing what was done to their families and want revenge, so they killed them all. Can you believe all of this was happening THIRTY years ago??
Well, the rest of the story I can tell through pictures. It was very sad to walk through the place where the people were executed. They were not gassed or shot… they were murdered with tools… Here is what we saw:
Skulls of Victims collected from the mass graves.
Taking in all in….
The branches of this tree were used to kill victims…..
Mass grave of 450 victims
I know something like this is hard for us to comprehend, but it is real and it did happen. Many people are still living today that were affected by this tragedy and we must not forget them. Please pray for Cambodia and it’s people, and pray that we learn from our mistakes. Pray for the families that were effected by this and the older generation that is still haunted from the memories…
