Friday, January 13, 2012

The Killing Fields

by Audrey Sayer

In Cambodia, "the Killing Fields" are a sad, but special place. Lots of people go there every day. Some to pray, some to honor the people who died, and some just to learn about it.
There are many killing fields in Cambodia, but the biggest one is outside of Phnom Penh. This is its story:
In the 1970's the leader of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, killed over 70,0000 people in this place because they were smart enough to know what he was doing was wrong. His soldiers dug pits to put the dead or almost-dead people in. The killed men, women and children - even babies. Across the country over 2,000,000 people died like this.
Today there is a memorial filled with human skulls to remind people that killing your own kind for no reason is inhuman, and unforgivable. Now the Killing Fields are peaceful and sad places. The ground there still remembers...

Cambodia is not the only country where this happened... it is all over the world. We must not kill for power.

1 comment:

Heidi said...

Thanks for your great post. That is some very heavy stuff.