Former Khmer Rouge Leader Among Cambodia's New Christians

Many Khmer Buddhists have become Christians "because they are looking for answers".

The now 63-year-old Cambodian was visiting a refugee camp when a wounded soldier gave him a Bible. At first, he was reluctant but did take it.

Then after reading from the Bible the officer of the Pol Pot regime got interested and visited a church service. "I remember the first time I made a detour to get to the church," he says. "I didn't want people to know. I felt ashamed for going there."

It took six weeks before Sophon, who once served as a Buddhist monk in his late teens, started believing in God.

"I had a mistress at that time, I smoked a lot, I had a drinking problem," says Sophon. "So I asked the pastor what I should do. He told me: 'Keep coming back to church and God will answer you.'"

"I prayed to God and felt the need to be pure and do what was good. So, I stopped smoking and drinking, and I said goodbye to my mistress."

These days the former commander works with the Cambodian office of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. He also serves as a pastor in a church in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, a position he wishes to hold until his death.

Sophon is just one of thousands of Cambodians who has converted to Christianity.

As a traditionally Buddhist country, pagodas, monasteries, and monks dressed in red or orange robes can be seen everywhere. But the country also has over 2,600 churches and just as with the number of Cambodians who have become Christians, that number is rising steadily.

According to Tep Samnang, executive director of the Evangelical Fellowship of Cambodia, missionaries have been...........

IIRC, the bible wasn’t fully translated into Khmer until 1954 (thanks, rest of the Christian world, for taking so long — sarc/off).

Phnom Penh had something like three churches in 1965 — a couple of Catholic ones (from the time of the French) and a tiny Chinese evangelical one.

By the time the city fell to the Khmer Rouge, it had 30 churches (each one had to have a membership of 100 before it could become a church, IIRC).

The President of the Supreme Court even became a Christian.

Many people had visions of what was going to happen; but were also told that one day the church would return.

What an interesting read. I am 61 years old, and remember the times of the Khmer Rouge very well, and in one sense have been fascinated with their horrific cult, Saloth Sar (the real name of Pol Pot), the “Year Zero”, the history of this freak and his racist form of communism and who was educated into his mindset by leftists in France, I recall watching some special on a US public television station which had some Dutch “intellectual” and leftist in the days just before the fall of Phnom Penh to the “Red Khmers” call Pol Pot “a great anti-colonialist”, many could already see the truth of where these cultists were going to take Cambodia and they managed to mass murder over 2 million Khmers, where wearing glasses became a crime that would be a death sentence because it was a symbol of “capitalism”, and anyone who has seen the film “The Killing Fields” has a glimpse of how bad it was and it was even worse than as depicted in the movie.

The psychological damage the Khmer Rouge is horrific and difficult for many to understand.

But all of this, the horror story, has nothing to do with, nor the fault of Buddhists.

It was the fault of ideation - a twist of communism that has origins in the West and French “intellectuals”, that is and was at fault.

If you want to go back to the roots of what happened in Cambodia, look to the left wing in Europe and the West. It came from the West and fed into the disturbed mind of Solath Sar. In fact, he along with the Khmer Rouge were the greatest danger to Buddhist of that region, to be a Buddhist was death in the times of Pol Pot. Yet, amazingly - the Buddhists did survive but the Khmer Rouge only had power for four years before they fell after attacking the Viet communists. So it wasn’t enough time to exterminate every Buddhist in Cambodia.

Some ask, why would communists viciously attack and engage war upon other communists?

Why not? Brother kills brother, sister too. In fact, everyone knew the Khmer and Viet would go to war - it was fully expected and predictable.

A lot of people cannot see something right now, but I do.

There is the same “thing” in the Democratic Party today that was the “thing” in Democratic Kampuchea of the Khmer Rouge. Both are a cult. There will not be a happy ending for America if the Democrats succeed in their current war on representative government - the hereos of the Democratic Party are the spies of deep state, violent politicized illiterate thugs, racist BLM, and their’s is where policy is determined by annoymous sources.

Sort of like the Khmer Rouge before the prisons were set up.

I am glad this Cambodia found Christianity if it helps to break or atleast reduce the psychological damage of horror in human skin which rips the skin off others. But what happened has nothing to do with Buddhists, and a lot to do with Western socialists and a Western idea called The Communist Party.

The Khmer Rouge came as child soldiers, illiterates, from the villages of no namesl from the fields and forests and jungles. They were taken from their parents, learned from the cadres that took them from their parents, then came to the Great City.

Remember one thing. The most dedicated killer is a child and a teen. It is easy. Do not let them take your children. These children will come to the Great City and it will never be forgotten how bad it will be.

Excellent post, ShivaFan: It sums up a lot of the root history of the Khmer Rouge, i.e. the French Communist Party (Soviet) and French Maoists (both native and from exile of other countries they infested).

As the only journalist to testify before Congress about the Khmer Rouge plans for political genocide for Cambodia (House Foreign Affairs Committee, July 1974, House Armed Services Committee April 1975), and a short-term journalist there (Nov. 1970), I weep for the people of Cambodia who went through what my relatives did in the Nazi Holocaust.

There was no difference, yet American Marxist/leftist propagandists such as Gary Porter, Bill Goodfellow and Guy Gran told Congress that (right in the middle of the worst killing periods), that there was “no genocide” in Cambodia and and that the KR were simply implementing new farm reform measures.

These same Cornell Un. produced red hacks said the same thing about Ho Chi Minh’s slaughter of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of No. Vietnamese citizens during his “Land Reform” programs from 1954-56, never mind the slaughter of hundreds of thousands in So. Vietnam when he launched his “final solution” against them shortly thereafter.

Perhaps the Buddhists of Cambodia, as well as the Moslem Chams (also of SVN), the few aboriginal peoples (Meos, Montgnards, etc) will find some new peace today. Our prayers go with them.

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