Americans for UNFPA Leadership Trip to Cambodia
January 2006

Tuol Sleng prison and the killing fields outside Phnom Penh

In contrast to the little girl's smiling face on the first page of this site these are the skulls of Cambodian men, women and children who will never smile again. They were executed by the genocidal, political lunatics of the Khymer Rouge who destroyed Cambodian society between 1975 and 1979 for the sake of a political dogma built on ignorance and irrationality. This destruction is a proximate cause of poverty in Cambodia today.

The skulls are stacked on shelves in a memorial building that stands on the former killing field outside Phnom Pehn. Here are hundreds of skulls, representing only a fraction of the 1.5 million Cambodians that died during this time.

To me, the contrast between the little girl's smiling face and these eyeless skulls is the direct result of choosing to do good in life, or to do evil.

Here are the results of UNFPA's choosing to do good, here is evil made real in with the details of imprisonment and execution by the Khymer Rouge, and here are my thoughts on why reason, not dogma, should guide each of us to choose good over evil.