But Cambodia is a country with a unique and tragic story, one unparalleled in human history. (though what is now going on in the Sudan is unbelievably tragic as well and marks another dark chapter in human history)
The Khmer Rouge kicked everyone out of the cities, forced them to work in fields, abolished money, destroyed machinery, reset the calendar to "Year Zero", and enslaved the country with the aim of transforming it into an agrarian society. Known as the Killing Fields, they brutally killed 2 million people -- more than 10% of the country's population -- and used schools and temples as prisons and torture chambers.
One especially sad consequence of this tragic history is the many victims of land mines, from children playing in the fields to young adults now in their twenties and thirties. Everyone has a story to tell about the "dark years" under Khmer Rouge .
they are a people focused on rebuilding
their lives and their country.
