Qualities for a better world
The Police Journal’s August cover story
(Operation Cycle Cambodia) brought back fond memories of my recent trip
to Cambodia. My wife and I visited our daughter, who is currently living in
Phnom Penh and working as a volunteer for a non-government organization.
Cambodia is indeed a captivating place to visit, and quite
different from other parts of South East Asia. The people are friendly and not
at all indifferent to tourists. One of the first and lasting impressions of
Phnom Penh is the sheer volume of traffic. For visitors, there appears to be no
system, with vehicles converging from all directions, and yet the traffic flows
with a minimum of fuss and disruption.
The traffic scene is almost indicative of the state of the
nation. The people are delightfully affable, but everywhere there are signs of
a country still suffering the effects of trauma, with very little in the way of
infrastructure and resources to meet the challenge.
The dark shadow of the heinous Pol Pot regime – which
executed near 2 million people – still hangs heavily over the nation.
Beggars with limbs missing from landmine accidents in the provinces are all too
numerous in the capital. And, more recently, the escalating numbers of HIV-AIDS
sufferers affects a determined but struggling nation.
One of the so-called tourist attractions is the genocide
museum where, in graphic detail, the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge are
documented and presented in film and static displays. A visit to one of the
killing fields about 30 minutes drive out of the capital reinforces the
terrible suffering the people experienced from 1976 to 1979.
In one gruesome display, thousands of human skulls are
stacked in a specially constructed building. Bullet holes are evident in some
of them, while others are dented from blows with blunt instruments.
The long flight home to Australia gave me time to reflect. How
could a nation do that to itself? How could so much evil be perpetrated by one
regime? Why – with the events of Germany, Uganda, Rwanda and, recently,
Iraq – does history appear to repeat itself? And, why, in Australia, does
it appear that serious crime is increasing?
Jesus once said that it is not what enters a person that makes
him or her unclean, but what comes out in the form of words and actions. In one
sense, there are no limits to the evil humanity can perpetrate. Only when we
allow those qualities of love, peace and forgiveness – that Jesus
demonstrated in his life – to flow out from us will the world be a better
place in which to live.
The words of the writer of one of the Psalms seem so
appropriate: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right
spirit within me.”
