A Somber Anniversary in Cambodia

Published January 07, 2009 @ 08:05PM PT

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of Pol Pot and the brutal Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, making for a rather somber anniversary dominated by the memory of the 2 million killed in his genocide against his fellow countrymen.

From the BBC:

"Pum Chantinie is now the secretary general of the Cambodian Red Cross. Along with the surviving members of her family, she walked hundreds of kilometres from the countryside back to Phnom Penh in January 1979, pushing a hand-made cart - only to discover their old house wrecked and surrounded by barbed wire.

'Our family gathers and we tell stories about our lives during the Khmer Rouge regime to our young generation,' she says. 'They ask me, 'Why, why why?' and I tell them I don't know why they did this - to our family, to Cambodian people'

Why? -- the most painfully resounding of unanswered questions.

(For additional information on the Cambodian Genocide, please see my previous post.)

[Photos of victims of the Khmer Rouge. These "mug shot" style photos have become one of the paramount symbols of Cambodians "killing fields."

Share this Post

Add a Comment

For your comment to be published, you will need to confirm your email address after submitting your comment.

If you already have an account, click here to log in.

First Name:

Last Name:

Email:

Create Password:

Comment

Check Spelling

Email me when there are new posts to this thread
Comment Policy

Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the ideas covered in the posts. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; that contain ad hominem attacks; or that are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion.

Author

Michelle became involved in the anti-genocide cause at a young age, and has been involved in various activist endeavors, including the Teach Against Genocide pilot campaigns, ever since.