Pol Pot and I
In the 1970s, the US Army pulled out of Southeast Asia. In its wake, we left a political vacuum that came to be filled by men like Pol Pot in Cambodia.
Pol Pot was an upper-class Cambodian, educated in elite schools in Phnom Penh and then partly in France in electrical engineering. While many men of his age loved Mao Zedong, Stalin, and communist thought, only a few men returned home to their countries and murdered 25% of their countrymen, in this case nearly 1.7 million (or up to 3 million, estimates differ).
As I walked through the killing fields in Phnom Penh this past month, I saw a tree where children were swung by the ankles into the trunk until dead. Its natural in these moments to feel horrified and judgmental. My mind wonders how we humans come to do this ourselves.
The museum acknowledges that these sorts of genocidal events are common around the world. Modern history itself, to say nothing of the preceding four thousand years, is full of such events. Rwandan, the holocaust, Europeans settling “the new world” in the Americas and killing American Indians for their land. Not to mention several hundred years of African slavery, in which countless humans were killed by slavers, and then subjected to a slow death in the Americas at the hands of rich and poor white Americans alike.
I’ve always kept such events at emotional arms-distance. These weren’t my forefathers, I’d think. I wasn’t there. I would have done differently.
Sweden (my country of heritage) was one of the only countries allowed in to review Pol Pots regime at the height of their genocide. Primer ministers and officials toured his factories and schools, saw what Pol Pot wanted them to see, and then began denouncing all Cambodian refugees (desperately telling their stories around the world about Pol Pot’s death camps) as liars. Swedes ended up funding Pol Pot and contributing to the death of 1.7 million Cambodians.
Where did Pol Pot go wrong? Why didn’t Sweden investigate further? Why did the U.N. continue to support Pol Pot’s government years after the genocidal events were discovered? These are good questions. But first we have to ask one closer to home, “Am I really all that different from Pol Pot and the many inept politicians who made the issues worse?”
I think its in our best interest to realize that Pol Pot was not a madman, but human, made of the same flesh and blood as us. he had the same intellectual faculties. He had desires, wishes, thoughts and feelings much like you or I. He wanted to make a difference. He wanted possessions and wealth. He liked the feeling of power.
Can any of us deny that these things exist inside of us as well?
We humans all share the same drives to power and wealth, recognition and ambition. It’s people, PEOPLE, who do these acts of brutality. We do them every time we turn a blind eye (like nearly the entire world during the Khmer Rouge). Whenever we settle for half truths (Sweden) and are filled with notions of grandeur (Nixon, The United States). We commit these atrocities when we allow ourselves to be driven by love of money or lust for power.
There is no escaping responsibility for the many atrocities around the world. It’s times like these that I began casting my eyes around for hope. Who will let in a little light into this dark world? Where does the problem lie?
The problem, to put it succinctly, is me. And only one voice gives me hope, and that’s found in the Word of God. Here alone we learn about a God desperately struggling on our behalf to right the many wrongs we have done. His name is Jesus. If there’s is any light to be had in this world it’s in Him, Son of God, a Light unto the world of darkness.
Lord, search out my heart and mind, see if there be any grevious way within me. Cleanse me and heal me, make me white as snow. May your strength be with me so that I will be able to stand in the evil days ahead.
Yours in Christ,
Zach
