Go Beyond

   Early Friday morning, Kurt Dillinger and the Silent Fall documentary film crew returned to the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center to film a segment at the killing tree. This is the spot where the Khmer Rouge took babies from their mothers, swung them by their feet, smashed them against this tree, and then tossed their bloody remains into the adjacent mass grave. I have stood before this tree on two occasions. It’s an emotional experience. Pol Pot’s cadre committed atrocities like this because they had been systematically desensitized to the value of human life. Choeung Ek bears silent testimony to the fact that any worldview that fails to value life ultimately treats lives as disposable.

   About mid-morning, we headed northwest from Phnom Penh along Highway 5 toward Poipet and arrived a little more than five hours later. Poipet is located in Banteay Meanchey Province along the border between Cambodia and Thailand. The unusual thing about this area is what has happened on the narrow strip of land between the Cambodian and Thai passport control gates. Because it is illegal to gamble in Thailand, opportunists have built luxurious hotels with gambling casinos in this no-man’s land. Thais go there to gamble and Cambodians go there to work.

   The activity in this no-man’s land has attracted more than gamblers. Drug dealers and sex traffickers scurried in like roaches, eager to get in on the action. And, the poor have moved to Poipet as well, swelling the population of the area to more than one-hundred thousand people. Unfortunately, the infrastructure of the town cannot support the population. So, the poor live as squatters in a muddy slum filled with garbage and sewage. This slum extends almost ten kilometers along the south side of Highway 5. We slogged through the area and spoke with many who live in the most deplorable of conditions there.

   As many as 40,000 of these poor people cross the border into Thailand daily to work as day laborers. These day laborers leave their kids alone all day — and sometimes for days. Their children do not attend school. And, because they are alone and vulnerable, many are kidnapped and taken to Thailand. Girls are sold to brothels and boys are sold as cheap labor to work at construction sites and brick factories. Some of these kids are used as mules to transport drugs. Those who control the lives of these kids treat them as disposable assets. There are rumors in the slums that if young Cambodian boys get sick or are injured on the job, they are tossed into the concrete mix and entombed in a building’s foundation. The poor here know that they are vulnerable and that their lives matter little to those with money and power.

   The poor of Poipet live in desperation and on scraps of hope. It is at this dark place that Life International and Kingsland Baptist Church will partner with Steve Hyde to care for the least of these. The governor of the province has made a hectare of land available for an orphanage and pregnancy resource center. Construction of the orphanage has started. Steve also hopes to raise additional funds to purchase the adjacent land where he plans to construct a school to educate the slum kids. I am encouraged that the work here has started. The orphanage will be called “Imparting Smiles” and is scheduled to open in December. I pray that God will use this joint initiative to impart hope and to affirm the value of human life in this dark place where lives are treated as disposable.