We were talking about genocide in the social psychology part of our Introduction to Psychology class. The NY Times has an article on Cambodian villagers who live near mass grave sites from the Khmer Rouge genocide in the 1970s. They have discovered that these graves contain some jewelry, and are unearthing the remains trying to get some money for food and staples.
Ghosts Wail as Cambodians Plunder Killing Field Graves – New York Times:
Nearly 20,000 killing fields, holding anywhere from a few bodies to hundreds, served as burial grounds for Khmer Rouge victims as well as execution sites.
Like many of the victims, Ms. Srey Net said, the people here died from accidents, exhaustion and starvation as well as fevers, malaria and an epidemic of diarrhea. Many of them were sent to a small, crude clinic nearby from which she said few emerged alive.
“Whenever a patient died, they would ring a gong or blow a whistle,” she said. “Even in the middle of the night, I had to run up there to help carry away the bodies.”
Last week she was among the graves again, whacking at the ground with a hoe, unearthing what may have been some of the same bodies she had buried years ago. And then, finding no gold, she reverted to her former role, retrieving and reburying some of the bones.
“I felt pity for them, that’s why I collected the bones,” she said. “They were scattered all over the place.”
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