Walking up the stairs of Wat Somrong Knong in the 90 degree heat, I feel a chill run down my spine.
The stairs of this Buddhist temple in Battambang, Cambodia that I ascend have been walked on countless times before my feet ever touched Cambodian soil, but, in my ascent, my mind fixates on those whose feet crossed its threshold in the mid-1970s. Those who faced unspeakable horrors within its walls.
As I wander around the monument dedicated to the 10,008 innocent men, women and children who lost their lives on the surrounding fields, my soul aches.
I clench my fists in anger as I read of the atrocities committed against the people of Cambodia engraved into the monument’s walls. Of the torments they endured, too unspeakable to repeat.
The more I learn the more angry I become.
Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge left behind 19,733 mass graves in 388 sites across Cambodia. These graves contain the bodies of middle class Cambodians, devout Buddhists, former government officials, public servants, doctors, teachers, lawyers, and those who resisted the regime’s goal of creating a classless agrarian utopia.
In addition to those who lost their lives directly at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, an estimated 500,000 to 1.5 million lost their lives in a famine. A famine brought on by the regime’s mismanagement of the economy in their attempts to eliminate currency and the free market while doubling the country’s rice production through forced labor. With the doctors gone, the fatality rates for diseases skyrocketed.
Over two million people lost their lives during this period of Cambodia’s history—almost a quarter of the nation’s population.
And, yet their history is one that few know outside of the country itself.
Two million gone and forgotten.
As we trudge up a nearby mountain and peer down into a pit within the mountain, our twelve-year-old tour guide describes to us the sound of women and children, of babies, being thrown down a cavernous flight of stairs.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
My heart breaks for those who have yet to see justice.
It wasn’t until 2003 that the first tribunal was held in Cambodia for the perpetrators of this genocide. And since then, only three people have been convicted.
Most mid- and low-level members of the Khmer Rouge still live openly in Cambodia—many holding high elected positions. Victims living alongside their tormentors.
Yet, as we walked down to the bottom of the pit, standing in the dark cave, light pours in from above reminding me that light always prevails. Justice wins out. Even in the darkest of places, God’s light will be made known.
As we head back out to the streets of Cambodia, I see that hope in the faces of the children smiling and waving from the back of motos.
“The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.” -Psalm 103:6
“I remain confident in this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” – Psalm 27:13-14
Statistics taken from the USHMM.
