Have you ever been hungry, tortured,
suffering, losing hope in life, waiting your turn to be killed? Have
you ever thought that your life was less valuable than a piece of
bread, a piece of paper, or a piece of candy? This phenomenon
happened to the Cambodian people under the genocidal regime ruled by
Pol Pot from 1975-1979.
“To keep you is no benefit, to
destroy you is no loss.” This quote was often spoken over victims
by Khmer Rouge soldiers before they would torture and kill innocent
Cambodians in the very fields that they worked. I just recently
visited “The Killing Fields and S-21 ( a torture prison) and
finished reading a book entitled “Children of Cambodia’s Killing
Fields”. It is an eyewitness account of the horror and terror the
survivors of the Cambodian genocide went through that took place only
a few years ago. When the Khmer Rouge Army (a rebel cambodian army
to over through the cambodian government) took over they entered the
capital city in Phnom Penh, when they did they forced everyone out of
there homes and marched the entire population of Cambodia out of the
cities and into the jungles and rice patties. They believed the only
way to liberate Cambodia was to kill all the educated (doctors,
teachers, military, government officials, foreigners, and religious
people) and force all of the city people into the jungles and rice
patties to work for the new government and brainwash them.
Starvation became a norm for the 5
years that the Khmer Rouge reigned. Prisoners in work camps were feed
two times a day a small cup of rice and water. There our several
accounts of servival as people resorted to new ways to eat and
survive. One Cambodian boy named Moly Ly recounts, “We became so
hungry that what had once been repulsive foods became desirable. Some
people were so hungry that they dug up dead bodies and slit the flesh
and fried it.”
Prisoners slaved all day in the fields
surviving in harsh living conditions, not only did they have to worry
about the soldiers killing them, but they had to worry about tigers,
poisonous snakes, and malaria. All western medicine was destroyed and
all doctors were killed, so if you got sick…you waited to die. Many
times the Khmer Rouge would make examples of family members and
workers in front of the camp. If you were suspected of not working
hard enough, or if they just didn’t like you they would kill you.
Sarom Prak speaks of his brothers murder, “I watched as my brothers
were forced to dig a large hole while the soldiers held guns to their
heads. I remember one soldier saying to the other, “We will save
our bullets.” Then they took big bamboo shoots and bet my brothers
again and again until they were dead. Their bodies were kicked into
the hole they had just dug themselves.”
This country has experienced so much
loss, millions of Cambodians murdered by there own. A once beautiful
growing nation is now in ruins and ripped apart. Still bleeding from
its wounds. Many people ask for justice but man can not provide true
justice for what has been done here. As Rith Mean says, “The
effects of the Khmer Rouge’s hatred and massacre of its own people
will never fade away. Hitler is dead, but Pol Pot and his entourage
are still alive and craving a return. Why do we as human beings
condone such a notorious, reprehensible phenomenon by allowing these
ferocious murders to still be loose?”
The truth is that only God can truly
provide Justice, Comfort, Peace, and Healing to such a horrible
tragedy. Working here in Cambodia with the young children and the
teens is showing me a generation rising up of believers and
worshipers of God! They are excited to share testimony of how Jesus
came to them. And of how he has healed there heart. Once they have
Jesus in their lives they begin to be filled with hope and promise of
what God will do for their family’s and their nation.
When I think of Cambodia…instead of
thinking of all the bloodshed and horror, I choose to instead think
of God’s promise for this nation….
You’re
the God of this City
You’re
the King of these people
You’re the Lord of this nation
You
are
You’re
the Light in this darkness
You’re
the Hope to the hopeless
You’re the Peace to the restless
You
are
There
is no one like our God
There
is no one like our God
For
greater things have yet to come
And greater things are still to be
done in this City
Greater
thing have yet to come
And greater things are still to be done in
this City
Please join me this Christmas season in
praying for our brothers and sisters in Cambodia, and for God’s will
to take place in this place and to bring healing and hope to this
nation!
I love you all
God Bless
Ryan
