Globe Syndicate
for release Friday October 31, 2003
Another Way
by Melodie Davis
A True Horror Story, And What We Can Learn From It
Sokreaksa Himm was a young boy in a large family in Cambodia in 1975. He endured
the worst fate any of us can imagine: his baby brother, father, mother, and most
of his siblings were all executed. They were clubbed and hacked to death with
crude hoes. He was also axed and left for dead
with the bodies of his family on top of him.
What were you doing during the late 70s? Perhaps you weren't even born but those
were the years I was a new bride and preparing to start a family. I wasn't very
aware of world affairs except from a distance. I remember hearing about the
horrible "killing fields" in Cambodia, but didn't really know or want to know
what all that meant.
I still don't want to know because it is a terrible, nightmare-type story. But
Sokreaksa has written a powerful book, The Tears of My Soul (Monarch Books,
2003). It is worth reading.
When the country was taken over by the Khmer Rouge in April of 1975, Sokreaksa's
family was forced to join others moving to the jungle. The Khmer Rouge
(Communists) came to power as part of the upheaval of the Vietnam War which had
spread to Cambodia, and tried to turn Cambodia into a self-sufficient, agrarian
utopia. (www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/asia/ <http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/asia/>).
Anyone who complained was "sent to study" - or killed. Teenage boys were
brainwashed into taking part in the killings of their fellow citizens, or were
killed themselves.
When Sokreaksa climbed out of the mass grave holding his family, he vowed to
take revenge. Days and weeks of bare survival, escaping the soldiers and spies
still in the area, evolved into months and years of struggling to stay alive.
Finally he made it to the relative safety of a refugee camp where he lived for
five years hoping to emigrate.
Growing up Buddhist, he first encountered Cambodian Christians in the camp. He
didn't want anything to do with them. The Buddhist faith of his parents hadn't
helped them; why should any other religion help him? He said, "If God is so good
and powerful, why did he allow the Khmer Rouge to kill my family?"
When his application for resettlement was first rejected, Sokreaksa fell into
total despair. "At last I recognized the need for something outside myself to
restore my bruised, battered spirit and give me some help. I longed for the
peace of God that I had heard the Christians talking about." He made a plain-out
bargain with God: if he were accepted to go to Canada, he would believe in God.
In 1989 he was finally accepted for resettlement in Canada and made good on his
promise to God. Even there he experienced severe post traumatic stress syndrome,
constantly reliving the scenes in his mind. He struggled with grief, anger and
depression. In college he began to study what had happened to him, and to sort
out his feelings for his family, the killers, and his inner turmoil. "The anger
against [the murderers] was as great as the grief for my family, and it burned
inside me like a great ball of fire," Sokreaksa writes. "I realized that I would
never know true peace until I had dealt with this as well; I had to find a way
of forgiving them, before the bitterness inside destroyed me."
He got to the place where he realized that forgiving didn't have to mean
forgetting. He knew that even if he could kill hundreds of the killers, he
wouldn't be satisfied. He realized that he would never have inner peace until he
let go of his anger and rage. "Forgiveness doesn't come through vengeance, and
neither does forgetting: no amount of violence could erase my memories. So I
gave up my urge to inflict pain on those who had killed my family. Nursing those
desires was only damaging me."
One of the worst legacies from this era is the fact that there are still about
four million land mines in the countryside, some from U.S. bombing during the
Vietnam War. Around 50 adults and children are killed or injured each month from
stepping on land mines, giving a new meaning to the term "killing fields." Many
people are working to help remove the land mines and to provide funding so that
it can happen faster.
But two other legacies can be instructional: I find a description from Yale
University to be chilling in describing the problems of the late 70's in
Cambodia: The Khmer Rouge "combined extremist ideology with ethnic animosity and
a diabolic disregard for human life." (www.yale.edu/cgp/). It is not hard to
think of a half dozen places in our world where, at least by some
interpretations, we have those same ingredients.
The other legacy is more hopeful: if Sokreaksa could make the decision to
forgive after the enormous wrong meted out to him and his family (and millions
of others), maybe there is hope for other dark and dismal situations where we
can see no hope.
For a free booklet on forgiveness, write to: Melodie Davis, Another Way c/o
Name\Address of YOUR newspaper; or e-mail: Melodie@mennomedia.org.
You can also visit Another Way on the Web at www.thirdway.com.
Melodie Davis is the author of seven books and has written her column since
1987. She taught feature writing and has won awards from the National Federation
of Press Women, Virginia Press Women and the American Advertising Association.
She and her husband have three daughters.
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