Holidays Are For Remembering

We often point out the many holidays that they have in Cambodia. It seems like most of their holidays are an excuse to take a day or a whole week off of work. Today was a holiday, if properly remembered, is very significant to the people of Cambodia. It is The End of Genocide Day.

Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge only ruled here for three years eight months and twenty days, but in that very short period through their cruelty killed 25% of the population of this nation. Phnom Penh today is a city of a little more than two million people, when the Khmer Rouge took power over forty years ago there were two and a half million living in Phnom Penh. We have been told that he emptied the city in days. The people were told to go to the provinces where their families were originally from and then they would be allowed to return in weeks, but that was a lie and never happened. The Khmer Rouge wanted to return Cambodia to an agrarian society, but those from the cities did not know how to farm. If they did not work then they were taken, beaten and eventually killed. If they stayed and tried, they worked many hours with little food and many starved to death. Others were affected by the wide spread diseases that spread through the population.

Today we did not go anywhere but we still worked from our apartment. Elder Oveson had a couple of letters that he needed to get done and out today. We are currently reading the Doctrine and Covenants for our gospel study. We are also reading novel series about World War II every evening called the Zion Covenant by Brock and Brodie Thoene. There is nothing to watch on TV except CNN, and stations where we do not understand what they are saying.