You Can't Imagine the Terror Unless You Were There

Anyone born after April 17, 1975 most likely has no idea what kind of significance it has. On this date, the massacre of over 2,000,000 Cambodians begins.

As the world slowly begins to accept the holocaust as a passing in history, there are a handful of souls who remember it as a living nightmare. Little does the majority of the world realize that a new holocaust has just passed us by.

The infamous Pol Pot of Cambodia re-enacts the horrific events triggered by Adolf Hitler and wreaks havoc amongst the lives of millions of innocent Cambodians. Destiny© draws out the drama that Pol Pot and his malicious Khmer Rouge have inflicted on lovers bound together by a cruel fate.

The Khmer Rouge...

How were all of these lives taken away ?

• People who Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge believed to be insignificant to them were executed without question.

• The starvation that innocent people had to suffer through was perhaps one of the most painful ways to die…because sometimes it wasn't the lack of food that killed them. As a 7-year old child was starving during this time, he had very few options for him to find food. So one day, he climbed a mango tree he happened to be near and picked a mango, so that he could feed himself and survive. As he climbed down from the tree, a Khmer Rouge soldier, clad in black and bearing a firearm, approached him and asked him why he "stole" the mango from them. Before the child had a chance to answer and plead for his life, the soldier drew his firearm and fired a shot right into the child's forehead. This is just one of many incidents that the satanic Khmer Rouge brought upon innocent lives.

• With all the medication and life saving drugs that were available only to Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge, simple diarrhea, fevers, coughs, etc. became the preemptive signs for death among innocent and common citizens.

• Land mines resting across each and every field greatly limited the areas in which people could explore to search for food. One step on these resulted in instant death, children and adults alike.

• Poor sanitation gave rise to unexpected diseases in villages. As human waste facilities were restricted to only Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, citizens could only urinate and defecate in their own homes. Their own fields, their own backyards, and their own farms became sites for birthing deadly sicknesses and were transformed into graveyards.

People may wonder why a country such as Cambodia that is naturally abundant in many resources cannot feed its people. The answer is very simple.

With the corrupt government able to access all the resources they want, they decided that they had just what they needed to control people. By denying citizens nourishment, they became very willing to do whatever was necessary to acquire their sustenance.

The Massacre...

Life at this time meant no more to the government than animals, sometimes even less. As people worked the fields and grew more and more tired, Pol Pot decided it was necessary to expend of these people so that their own resources would not have to be used to keep their workers alive.

Instead, they valued cows more than they did humans because a cow could work the field, graze and keep on working without complaining. To them, a cow was worth the efforts and reliability of ten people.

There was no fair law, no true justice. The closest thing they had to justice was what the Khmer Rouge called "Ongka Ler". A simple Freudian slip would have resulted in someone knocking on your door at night. In the morning, they would have referred to your dead body as, "Kmunghk", the enemy.

Imagine yourself in this situation.

What would you want to do if you were living under these circumstances? Of course you would want to escape. It's a shame that escape was not as easy as it sounds. As victims attempted to escape across the borders and to freedom, they encountered landmines, diseases, Khmer Rouge soldiers, etc. They tried to cross the borders to Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, and some were even bold enough to try to get to Hong Kong. But for the majority of them, Khmer Rouge, diseases, etc. killed them and pirates attacked those who made it out of Cambodia.

Women were raped, children were thrown overboard and left to die, and other atrocities prevented them from reaching their destinations.

Human skeletons, floating body bags in rivers, and rotting corpses lying on the dirt road were normal sights to see. Human emotions started as a scared and sorrowful feeling, but that gradually turned into an angry and frustrated feeling.

Nobody would have thought that a small group of individuals led by the satanic butcher Pol Pot would have caused so much anger and distress.

Living under the Khmer Rouge regime was worse than a living hell. A five-year hell to be exact. The small percentage that has been able to cheat death escaped to America, France, Australia, Canada, and many other countries.

Many of these people were separated from their families during their evacuation and were forced to restart their lives. With the thought that their loved ones were dead deeply and forever etched in their minds, they had no choice but to start over if they wished to survive. They had no choice but to try and forget and move on with their lives the best they could.

Some of them will never realize that the life "After the Killing Fields" has only just begun. They might have escaped the Khmer Rouge regime and Pol Pot's malicious rule with their lives, but they escaped without realizing that the real heartbreak and pain they will experience only came after their bittersweet escape.

Destiny© is a new motion picture that you should see. It is an example of how a few of the victims escaped the horror, only to encounter a new agonizing freedom that crept up on their lives.

Imagine that you escaped the tragedy. You think everything is going to be okay, that you are going to finally be able to be happy.

Now imagine that getting away is just another nightmare. Everything is not okay. That heartbreak and tragedy are still haunting you. That is the truth that Destiny^© is based upon...

The director and producer of this film were both victims of The Killing Fields tragedy. They survived the modern day holocaust and now are ready to show the world the anguish caused by the Khmer Rouge. This film is a limited budget film, but the emotions make you realize all the simple luxuries in life that we all take for granted, sometimes come with a high price. It becomes apparent that The Killing Fields have a very profound effect on not only the victims, but also everyone else they encounter in their lives. This film is a fine example of the sentiments that events many people are unaware of have brought out.