Five Things We Will Learn
- How Cambodia became one of the worst places in the world for child sex trafficking.
- How the leadership of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge destroyed families, morality, education, and faith.
- Why history repeats itself when people do not understand the events that created the present.
- How communism, godlessness, and the destruction of the family led to generational brokenness in Cambodia.
- Why the answer to this crisis is not military force or government, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Why We Must Learn the History Behind the Horror
We often hear the phrase, “History repeats itself.” But the truth is that many people do not actually know the history. So when it begins to repeat itself, they do not recognize it.
People say, “History repeats itself,” but if we do not know what happened before, how can we see it happening again?
When John shared about The Pink Room and the work of Agape International Ministries in Cambodia, it struck something deep. How did a nation reach the point where adults sell their own children — five-year-old girls, six-year-old girls, eight-year-old girls — for sex?
According to Agape International Ministries, some of these girls are sold for as little as 25 cents and as much as $40.
Listen to VFNtv Podcast: The Story Behind the Story: Children Sold as Sex Slaves in Cambodia – The Pink Room & Pol Pot
The movie The Pink Room tells of a special room upstairs where virgin girls are sold for even more money. The reality is horrifying. Most people react with shock and say, “Who would do such a thing? How could a parent sell their own daughter just to survive?”
But that is where most people stop. We assume we understand the evil without asking what created it.
We often hear leaders frame events as moral causes, but unless we know the history, we can be misled. Woodrow Wilson described World War I as a moral cause. More recently, leaders such as former president Barack Obama have spoken about events around the world that most Americans have never seen firsthand. Rather than simply accepting or rejecting what leaders say, we must investigate what actually happened and place it in its full historical context.
To understand the present, we have to understand Cambodia’s past.
Cambodia: A Nation Destroyed From Within
Cambodia sits between Thailand and Vietnam in Southeast Asia. Many nations have experienced genocide, poverty, and oppression. Usually it is one people group attacking another.
Cambodia was different.
The genocide in Cambodia was carried out by Cambodians against their own people.
In the 1970s, a communist leader named Pol Pot rose to power through his movement known as the Khmer Rouge.
When Pol Pot took control, he did not simply change a government. He destroyed an entire civilization.
He emptied the cities and forced everyone into the countryside and rice fields. He executed the educated. Teachers, doctors, lawyers, religious leaders, and anyone who could think independently were targeted.
Then he attacked the family.
Husbands were separated from wives. Children were separated from parents. Eventually, children were used to torture and even execute their own families.
The children who survived that nightmare became the parents of today.
They grew up with no family, no education, no morality, and no understanding of right and wrong. Many lived in severe poverty. The result was a society so broken that some parents now sell their own daughters.
The Utopian Lie of Pol Pot
Pol Pot did not begin with open violence. He began with an idea: utopia.
He believed society could be purified and remade.
While studying in Paris, Pol Pot became captivated by Marxism and communism. He lost his faith in God and embraced the teachings of Karl Marx.
He was also deeply influenced by Mao Zedong and the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
Pol Pot believed in the same dream of a perfect society that has captivated many political thinkers. Even the language of “utopia” has appeared throughout modern politics and academia. Hillary Clinton wrote her college thesis on Saul Alinsky and the idea of building a better society through radical change. But history repeatedly shows that when people attempt to build heaven on earth without God, they often create hell instead.
Mao had launched what was called the “Great Leap Forward.” Pol Pot wanted something even greater. He called his version “Year Zero.”
Year Zero meant the complete destruction of everything that existed before.
God was declared dead.
Religion was banned.
Family authority was abolished.
Education stopped.
Healthcare disappeared.
Money, businesses, foreign languages, newspapers, radios, telephones, and even bicycles were confiscated or banned.
Cambodia was sealed off from the world.
The message was simple: there is no God, only the state.
Communism promised, “The government will take care of you. The government will meet all your needs.”
But when government becomes god, people stop being made in the image of God. Human life loses value.
That is exactly what happened in Cambodia.
The Killing Fields and the Destruction of Humanity
Under the Khmer Rouge, millions of Cambodians were forced into slave labor in what became known as the Killing Fields.
People were starved, overworked, beaten, and killed.
Most survived on roughly half a pound of rice every two days.
Gatherings of more than two people were illegal.
Schools became prisons and torture centers.
The Khmer Rouge had a slogan: “What is rotten must be removed.”
Anyone who was educated, religious, successful, or suspected of disloyalty was considered “rotten.” Buddhist monks, doctors, teachers, police officers, lawyers, former government officials, and even their families were executed.
In just four years, Pol Pot killed about 25% of Cambodia’s population.
To understand the scale, if 25% of the population of the United States were killed today, it would equal roughly 85 million people.
The nation was left traumatized, devastated, and morally shattered.
How Pol Pot Came to Power
Pol Pot was not born as a dictator. He grew up in a simple farming family.
He later went to Paris to study, where he was radicalized by Marxist ideology. When he returned to Cambodia, he worked as a teacher and quietly spread communism for years.
In 1963, he openly declared his communist beliefs.
At that time, Cambodia had recently gained independence from French colonial rule, known as French Indochina. The nation had a young prince whom the people loved.
Pol Pot attempted an uprising against the prince, but he failed and fled into the jungles near Vietnam.
There he began recruiting poor, uneducated boys between the ages of 12 and 18.
His strategy was simple: keep them ignorant, and they will do whatever you say.
Eventually, world events helped Pol Pot rise.
The Vietnam War and the Road to Disaster
During the Vietnam War, the United States was fighting the spread of communism in Vietnam.
American leaders such as John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon believed in the “domino theory,” the idea that if one nation became communist, the surrounding nations would follow.
At first, America said there would be no boots on the ground. The United States would provide weapons, training, and air support. But as the war continued, hundreds of thousands of American troops were eventually sent into Vietnam, and victory increasingly came to be measured by body counts.
As American forces pushed North Vietnamese troops, many crossed into Cambodia, near where Pol Pot was hiding.
The United States secretly bombed parts of Cambodia to target those forces.
At the same time, the United States supported a coup that removed Cambodia’s popular prince.
The prince, angry and betrayed, joined forces with Pol Pot.
Pol Pot used the prince’s popularity to gain support. Once he had enough power, he betrayed and killed the prince and took complete control.
Ironically, the very thing the United States was trying to stop — communism — was pushed into a country that had resisted it.
Pol Pot then destroyed the moral, spiritual, and social foundations of Cambodia.
From the Killing Fields to The Pink Room
The girls being sold in Cambodia today are not disconnected from the horrors of the past.
The parents selling their daughters are often the children of those who survived the Khmer Rouge.
They grew up without healthy families.
Without faith.
Without education.
Without any model of love, truth, or morality.
When a nation spends years teaching people that life has no value, eventually people begin to act as though life has no value.
That is how a society reaches the point where a five-year-old girl can be sold for $40.
According to Agape International Ministries, many of the men paying for these girls are often Americans.
That should grieve us deeply.
We cannot simply point to Cambodia and say, “How terrible.” We must also look at ourselves.
The Real Answer: The Gospel of Jesus Christ
It is easy to wrap ourselves in patriotism, politics, or military strength and think those things can solve the world’s problems.
But the answer is not military force.
The answer is not communism.
The answer is not government.
The answer is God.
The answer is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Agape International Missions responds to this evil through four steps: prevent, rescue, restore, and prevent again.
They work in communities. They partner with local churches. They rescue girls from trafficking. Their restoration center currently cares for 57 girls, most between the ages of 8 and 13. They have also trained more than 700 churches across Cambodia to respond with truth and love.
The Gospel rebuilds what evil destroyed.
Where communism destroys family, the Gospel restores family.
Where trauma destroys morality, the Gospel restores conscience.
Where people have been taught that life is worthless, the Gospel declares that every person is made in the image of God.
The Apostle Paul asked: “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent?” (Romans 10:14-15, NIV)
We do not need more soldiers sent into the nations.
We need missionaries.
We need men and women filled with the love of God and the truth of Jesus Christ.
Imagine if, instead of sending 500,000 troops into Asia, the world had sent 500,000 missionaries.
How different might Cambodia look today?
The answer to the darkness of Cambodia is not found in another government, another political ideology, or another human system.
The answer is God Himself.
Alive, not dead.
Conclusion: Learn History So We Do Not Repeat It
If we do not learn the history behind tragedies like Cambodia, we will never understand the warning.
History does repeat itself when people reject God, destroy the family, silence truth, and hand absolute power to the state.
Cambodia shows us what happens when a society loses its moral compass.
But it also shows us something else:
No nation is beyond hope.
No child is beyond rescue.
No society is beyond restoration when the love and truth of Jesus Christ enter the darkness.
Related Articles on The Torch
- “Why the Family Matters More Than Ever” – https://greglancaster.org/torch/
- “The Crisis of Fatherlessness and the Future of Society” – https://greglancaster.org/torch/
- “Communism, Government, and the Loss of God” – https://greglancaster.org/torch/
- “How the Gospel Restores What Evil Destroys” – https://greglancaster.org/torch/
- RULE 13 “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Are They Using Tips from #Lucifer to Organize America and the World, but First, Wisdom from the Live of Dr. King, Jr.
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