Please read If Heaven Could Cry: Part 1 and If Heaven Could Cry: Part 2…
The Khmer Rouge’s national anthem:
Ruby blood that sprinkles the towns and plains…Of Kampuchea (Cambodia), our homeland.
Splendid blood of workers and peasants, Splendid blood of revolutionary men and soldiers.
Cambodia became a killing field. A mass grave yard of innocent victims. While 1/3 (2 million) of the population physically died during these 4 years of darkness, those that lived through this period died a slow, painful death emotionally, spiritually and mentally. Many survivors are pushing through and today are living a ‘normal life’, but their memory haunts them daily…
Sarom Prak, a survivor who lives in New Zealand, recounts the following story:
“Before they were butchered, some innocent people were coerced to dig small pits for themselves. None of us had the energy to fight back because we didn’t have enough food to eat. After the new pit was ready, the young soldiers tied the arms of their victims and ordered them to kneel near the edge of the pits. Then the young soldiers began to hit them with heavy hoes, thick bamboo sticks, or axes…Some victims were not yet dead when the soldiers pushed earth over them…”
He continues on,
“When the executors slaughtered people, they generally switched on a blaring loudspeaker because they didn’t want the villagers to hear the shouts of pain and moaning. After a while, when the villagers heard the loudspeaker they knew that the Khmer Rouge were slaying people. So the villagers who lived around a killing center wept bitter tears quietly.” (Picture below) This is the magic tree. It is located in a killing field twenty minutes outside of Phnom Penh. A loudspeaker hung from a branch.
History is still alive today. You can still see the struggle.
History becomes real when you look it in the face.
Especially when ‘he or she’, not ‘history’, stares back at you.
And when ‘he or she’ is scattered all over the ground like trash…
I don’t claim to understand why this happened (this could be another blog!), but I do know that God restores and redeems in the midst of tragedy. Isaiah testifies to this promise. The ‘
Ruby blood that sprinkles the towns and plains’ (that was sung thousands of times over by the Khmer Rouge) – that stain can be removed. In fact, it can become as
‘white as wool’!
…For your hands are covered with the blood of your innocent victims. Wash yourselves and be clean! Let me no longer see your evil deeds. Give up your wicked ways. Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the orphan. Fight for the rights of widows. “Come, now, let us argue this out,” says the Lord. “No matter how deep the stain of your sins, I can remove it. I can make you as clean as freshly fallen snow.
Even if you are stained as red as crimson, I can make you as white as wool. If you will only obey me and let me help you, then you will have plenty to eat.” Isaiah 1:15-19
The survivors’ testimonies are more powerful than any words I may attempt to write. I will let Sarom’s words leave the lasting impression…and possibly a call to action?
“I am a survivor of the Communist regime. I have undergone bitter suffering for many years in Cambodia. So I take every opportunity to notify others and insist that people in all four corners of the earth fully realize what happens when people slay other human beings. I am not you and you are not me, but we are all human beings. Life is not something to sell.”
Once again, Sarom Prak’s testimony came from
Children of Cambodia’s Killing Fields
by Dith Pran.
