But especially Gen-Y or Z for that matter. I feel a bit guilty and sure I can try and invent exscuses but there is a lot of stuff in the world I have been completely blind too. In the age of the web, we can sometimes be selfish and not even think to google the important stuff. Recently, though following on from a conversation of my parents mentioning Pol Pot, I wondered, perhaps its about time I see just how horrible this guy was. The results are frightening. I won't really go into too much detail, but if you have the time, I highly recommend you go onto youtube and google "Pol Pot" or "the Secret Killer" it's a documentary about the life of Pol Pot and how he turned into a murderous dictator. There's also a cool doco called "cry Bloody Murder", which canvasses alot of recent genocidal events, from Serbia, to Cambodia, to Rwanda. It's not nice it's really horrible, but I think we need to get real and at least understand what happened in these places.
So my poem is about Cambodia. What happened in Cambodia? Well the Khmer Rouge, staged a military coupe and took over Cambodia between 1975-1979 and changed its name to the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea. They also tried to kill off all the educated, all the ethnics and all religions. The idea was only the native peasants were spared. On top of that Pol Pot removed everyone from the cities and towns, into Rural peasant villages to grow rice. He did this for four years, for four years the city was a ghost town. Two million people were killed, two million or a quarter of the population. Forced to starve to death cultivating the land and to dig their own mass graves. It truly was horrific and what's worse is that if the stars hadn't alligned in Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge's favour, it might never have happened. It makes me sick to think about it, but if you have a moment today. Take a second to pray or think about everything these poor people lost. If you want to know more I highly recommend reading "First they Killed my Father", it's a great book told from the perspective of a woman, who lived through the dark years when she was only a child.
Also check out this link.
YEAR ZERO
They marched them into the fields
And beat their spirits down
with blunt instruments
Money lost all meaning
It was no more than toilet paper to them
There was their utopia
And they fashioned it's terms
Over so many years
Forced to wait like rats
There romantic tale was finally
Written with mud and rice and blood
The fields were ripe and red for
Their unnatural harvest
The world was unmade but
Behind their unassuming veil
They had unleashed hell on earth
And how fragile had it all been
How easy to undo what had taken
centuries to build
But they were gods it was their nature
to create
Even now it will never be as it was
There is no going back
There is nothing left
Before YEAR ZERO.
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