Posted on 10/23/2004 7:39:50 PM PDT by aculeus
The Khmer Rouge followed a harsh brand of communism, killing nearly two million people in their bid to return Cambodia to Year Zero. Now they have a new faith: evangelical Christianity.
Hundreds of former fighters have been baptised in the past year. The Khmer Rouge's mountain stronghold, the town of Pailin in south-west Cambodia, has four churches, all with pastors and growing congregations. At least 2,000 of those who followed Pol Pot, the guerrillas' former leader who died six years ago, now worship Jesus.
Many new converts were involved in the bloody battles, massacres and forced labour programmes that led to the Killing Fields. Between 1975 and 1979 the Khmer Rouge sought to eradicate religion, ripping down the country's biggest cathedral, killing Muslim clerics and turning Buddhist temples into pigsties.
According to one pastor, 70 per cent of the converts in Pailin are Khmer Rouge. For many, it offers a hope of salvation. 'When I was a soldier I did bad things. I don't know how many we killed. We were following orders and thought it was the right thing to do,' said Thao Tanh, 52. 'I read the Bible and I know it will free me from the weight of the sins I have committed.'
The Khmer Rouge have been the focus of a drive by US-based religious groups. Lee Samith, a senior aide of Pailin's governor, was a military intelligence officer for the Khmer Rouge and one of the cadres to convert. He had been repeatedly visited by a missionary from a Colorado-based group, who showed films of the life of Christ.
'I opened my heart and Jesus came in,' said Lee, 36. Like 90 per cent of Cambodians, he was previously a Buddhist. Now he is involved in the New Life Presbyterian Church, on the outskirts of Pailin. Its wooden walls are covered with Christmas decorations and colourful posters portraying the life of Jesus.
But Lee has yet to shed all his former ideology. 'Pol Pot had good ideas for Cambodia and for all people,' he said. 'Only foreigners talk about genocide. Deaths due to class conflict are inevitable.'
After being ousted from Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, in 1979 by the Vietnamese, the Khmer Rouge withdrew to the mountains to fight a series of regimes.
Pailin, which is rich in timber and gems, has been the economic springboard for the movement since its beginnings. It is a rough place, full of bamboo brothels and bars selling bad alcohol and worse food. It is reached by a 50-mile road so rutted and potholed that it takes even 4WD vehicles more than three hours to negotiate. The thickly forested hills, scene of dozens of battles over 30 years, are heavily mined.
But the Khmer Rouge has now largely been brought in from the cold. Pailin's governor is a member of the Cambodian Prime Minister's party, despite being a former bodyguard of Pol Pot. His deputy, Kuoet Sothea, a key aide of the genocidal leader, told The Observer that many of his former comrades-in-arms 'feel sorry for what they did. National unity and solidarity is the main aim now'.
Several senior figures, such as 'Duch' - Kang Kek Ieu - who ran the S21 complex in Phnom Penh where an estimated 16,000 people died, have converted to Christianity. Their new faith offers more than spiritual comfort. After years of negotiation with the UN, the Cambodian government has reluctantly agreed to put those responsible for the genocide of the late 1970s on trial.
Several Khmer Rouge leaders live in villas in Pailin, profiting from large farms, logging of hardwood forests and gem mining. Though many are old, they now fear dying in prison. Christian repentance is likely to mitigate any sentence they might receive.
Kun Lung, 49, started as a bodyguard for the senior commanders and became the Khmer Rouge's best-known propagandist, responsible for bloodcurdling broadcasts on their infamous radio station. He was baptised recently and now organises Pailin Radio, describing 'God's work' in two daily programmes.
However, although it is the senior commanders who will stand trial, the missionaries, funded by evangelical associations in America, South Korea and Singapore, have found most of their converts among the middle and lower ranks of the Khmer Rouge.
Most veterans now eke out a living as landless labourers on the estates of their former political chiefs. They live in flimsy shacks and work 15-hour days. With no government or international aid, local amenities are scarce. There is one dilapidated health clinic for 30,000 people.
The missionaries have built an orphanage and Bible schools. One pastor is planning a kindergarten. Other groups have built wells, marked 'A gift from Jesus'. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
What is your point anyway. I do believe the wages quote is from Shakespeare not a Bible. What are you asking?
What I am saying is I don't care whether they are converted or not, they have yet to face justice in this world, in this life and they certainly deserve that. Would you agree?
I expect to be also. I also expect to be forgiven. So we have that in common, I am sure. Perhaps those who ignored the Khmer Rouge are equally culpable. If these guys are sincere in their repentance (and i bet some are) who are we to stand between them and their forgiveness?
God may bless these new Christians, but the people they murdered surely won't. Nor will their relatives. The genocide these people took part in is second only to the Holocaust.
If they're soul is right with God than they will recieve forgivness...but they still must pay for the crimes they committed.
Check out romans 6:23. Unless Shakespeare was around in the late first century, I don't believe the quote is his. (Although I believe he did agree with the intent.)
Their "forgiveness" has two parts. The one having to do with God has nothing to do with you or me. But who are we to decide if they ought be "forgiven" as you and I have not been murdered, had our family murdered, had our children murdered. I don't think we have anything to do with whether those dead people forgive or not, they are dead.
Are you suggesting earthly justice ought to be waived because you see them as forgiven?
Sounds like a Fonda conversion to me.
No, it's in the Bible alright...Romans 6:23
Full Disclosure: why don't they make concordances for The Bard as well?
But sincere conversion of those who committed genocide was not part of Gramsci's agenda.
The question is not just whether the conversions to Christianity are sincere or fake; the question is, if they are sincere, how much pressure these people will be under to recant their conversion, and how much effort it will take to shake off a lifetime of brainwashing and the memory and guilt of having committed atrocities.
The Khmer Rouge remain human after all...and therefore remain subject to both grace and temptation.
How hard would it be for you to convert and stay converted if you had committed their crimes?
And if their conversions are fake, Who The F*ck are they trying to impress?
yes way!
Well, they're not converting to Islam. That's a Plus.
Christianity had a rough start in Cambodia; the bible wasn't fully translated into Khmer until about 1964, IIRC.
In 1970, there were only a few churches in Phnom Penn (2 Chinese and one Khmer for the Protestants, plus some Catholic churches left over from the French period).
The coup which overthrew Sihanouk was followed by Christian growth, so that by the time Cambodia fell to the Khmer Rouge,
there were some 30 Protestant churches in Phnom Penn (a growth factor of 10, in a period of 5 years).
The President of the Supreme Court and various other individuals had become believers in "the new God".
All of this was swept away with the fall of the city;
but apparently the earlier labor (and sacrifice) was not
in vain.
Matthew 13
24 Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field:
25 But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.
26 But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.
27 So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?
28 He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?
29 But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.
30 Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.
Christ really can lift the load of guilt and sin off a
person if they will truly repent with sincerity for the
sins of their life. - I can't explain it too well, but
I've experienced it. - I still have to go boldly before the
throne of grace and confess my sins and ask for forgiveness
on a regular basis. - I was baptized originally at 12 yrs.
of age, which may have been too young, but I've had a sense
of that grace following me into the valley of the shadow
of death in all the years since then, and sometimes when I
am still before the Lord, I feel His presence in such a
way that I can only describe it as Pure Love.
You have to read this
PRAISE GOD.
HIS GRACE IS BEYOND COMPREHENSION.
CHRIST'S BLOOD IS BEYOND SUPREME POWER IN IT'S EFFICACY.
These characters well earned my most intense loathing at the time of their crimes.
But I have not a microgram of trouble welcoming them as brothers--blood brothers through the Blood of my Lord and Savior.
The hearts of all men and women are deceitfully wicked. Scriptures are brutally accurate about that--regardless of whether or not given individuals are remotely aware of the fact or honest about the fact, or not.
It is only God's grace that protects any of us from ourselves--as well as from each other. Virtually any of us have the capacity to become the most ruthless and hideous murderers and torturers. Zimbardo's "prisoner/guard" experiments make that abundantly clear.
Given certain childhood experiences and lack of key attachment/affection behaviors by trustworthy parents; as well as certain adult contexts, circumstances etc. and most any of us could turn into any number of horrid creatures.
It is ONLY the Grace of God and our cooperation with God which prevents such.
Given the massive release of lawlessness demon forces in recent years and the culture of there being 'no right or wrong,' all manner of hideous brutalities are likely to increase across the globe and particularly in the USA.
I venture to hazard the assertion that there will be liberals in our Republic who will end up more murderously ruthless against Christians and other patriots than PolPot and his henchmen were.
Folks in Asia have tons of experience with such horrors currently and from historical incidents.
Americans think of themselves as ABOVE THAT. They are deceived. And the process of that deception being rubbed in their faces will be a most hideous one.
God is determined that people everywhere in our era--and I have a sense--that critters in all creation become acutely aware of at least a couple of facts:
1) that the heart of man once deceived by satan has become married to satan's values--and left to itself--it's only purpose is death, theft and destruction.
2) and that Only God's Grace through The Blood and life of Jesus can spare us; redeem us; cleanse our hearts and set us eternally right.
The devastatingly shocking and destructive thing is not that Pol Pot's henchment could now become authentic Believers in Christ's Love, Blood, Salvation by God's Grace.
The devastatingly shocking and destructive thing is that American's by vastly larger numbers than ever before--believe themselves to be quite above such hideous deadly doings APART FROM GOD. God is going to show them vividly otherwise. And a new crop of martyrs will gain their martyr's crowns thereby.
It was "come to Jesus time."
Our God is so good and so awesome. Jesus came to seek and save the lost and offer forgiveness to any who will repent and turn to Him, the God of salvation, forgiveness, mercy and eternal life.
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