There simply are not adjectives strong enough nor harsh enough to describe the Cambodian faction, Khmer Rouge, that gained control in 1975 and its leader Pol Pot.
Today, type the word "genocide" and you see fresh reports of Darfur and Rwanda. But it was the Khmer Rouge who marched through Cambodia, one by one emptying villages and cities of its people. It is estimated that the minimum loss of life is around the 1.5 million mark.
TIME magazine penned it appropriately: this is "one of the century's greatest massacres."
TIME compiled a disturbing but important photo journal titled "The Legacy of Pol Pot: A Photographic Record of Mass Murder" that shows the mass graves from the "killing fields," the high school that was transformed into a modern day Auschwitz where men, women, and children were photographed and then executed, and anonymous pictures of those who were photographed and murdered. The look on these peoples faces leaves one without a shadow of a doubt that they knew their end was imminent.
Many might read this and say "Why in hell would I want to view these pictures?" For the same reason that if we ever were placed in the same situation, we would hope someone would not turn away the opportunity of looking into our eyes, recognize us as human – place a face to the horror – and remember us.
Last week, I introduced you to the poet Christopher T. George. He recently wrote a fascinating poem titled The Ghosts of Cambodia that I wanted to share with you.
Chris wrote the poem after reading an article in the Washington, D.C. Examiner several months ago. He said he was moved by the story about how the skulls from Pol Pot regime’s victims were being put in a ruined school by local policemen near Tonle Bati Lake. George later researched and found that there were Angkor Wat-like ruined temples near the lake which led him to adding the opening stanza about the ancient temple.
George explained: "I feel that the old tragedy and the new tragedy speak to each other and amplify the loss and the pain."
The Ghosts of Cambodia
The old farmer takes us to a temple splashed
with magenta bougainvillea; a carving shows
a royal horse trampling a king's unfaithful
wife to death. Below, a saronged woman
offers rice and plum wine to the dead.
A ruined school is now a shrine stacked
with skulls rescued from the fields;
offerings of fruit and cups of water sit
in the door. He says, "Where the skulls lay
in the fields, they became soft and smelly.
"The water buffalo began to eat them.
If we hadn't gone and collected them,
the buffalo might have eaten them all.
"Nightly, the spirits of the dead startle
us as they call out, ‘Bring us water,
it’s so hot and crowded in here!’
Still their spirits cry out, taunt us."
(c) Christopher T. George. Published with author's permission.
Christopher T. George was born in Liverpool, England in 1948 and first emigrated to the United States with his parents in 1955. He now lives in Baltimore, Maryland, near Johns Hopkins University with his wife Donna and two cats. Chris’s poetry has been published in Poet Lore, Lite, Maryland Poetry Review, Smoke, and Bogg, and online at Crescent Moon Journal, Electric Acorn, Melic Review, Painted Moon Review, Pierian Springs, the poetry (WORM), Triplopia, and Web Del Sol Review. Chris is the Editor of Desert Moon Review http://www.desertmoonreview.com/. He has his own personal poetry site at http://chrisgeorge.netpublish.net/index.htm
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