Heart and Soul: Violence, children and Cambodia’s monks

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 10 April 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

***This programme contains descriptions of genocide and violence against children*** Fifty years ago the fall of Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, to the Khmer Rouge sparked a modern-day genocide that saw millions murdered in just four years. Today, a group that was almost entirely destroyed in the bloodshed is working both in person and online to heal the wounds that are still keenly felt. Religious practice was effectively outlawed under the Khmer Rouge and Buddhist monks were viciously targeted by the regime. By the time the genocide came to an end all but 3,000, of the country's 60,000 monks had been murdered. Now, still seen as the heart of Cambodian society, they re being mobilised to spread a message of non-violence across the country.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Cambodian monks chanting the Dharma.
0:14.0	The teachings of Buddha.
0:15.6	It's an ancient and familiar sound in our temples,
0:18.3	but now it's taken over TikTok.
0:23.6	I'm Patry Derek Pan, and this is the documentary Heart and Soul,
0:27.2	violence children and Cambodese monks for the BBC World Service.
0:30.8	To warn you, this program contains descriptions of genocide and violence against children.
0:38.8	My name is Venerable Guseppeo.
0:42.6	I have about 6 million followers on social media.
0:46.8	Around the world, people worry that social media is changing societies for the worse.
0:51.5	But here, it's being harnessed in a surprising way,
0:54.1	the reasons for which
0:55.5	are rooted in events that date back decades. These pictures were made from a tank as it rolled
1:01.6	through the streets of Plompin. As you can see, people were out on the streets, bathing and shearing
1:07.8	as the Khmer Rouge arrived. The mood in the city began to change.
1:12.6	Just two hours after the Khmer Rouge arrived, people were told to leave the city.
1:17.6	They've thrown everyone out of Nampen and all the major cities into the countryside,
1:22.6	which seems an extraordinary thing to do, but they justify it on the grounds that they got to overthrow completely
1:28.7	the old established order.
1:31.7	April 17, 1975, our capital, Penhompeng, fell to a brutal regime, the Khmer Rouge.
1:38.1	What ensued over the following years was one of the darkest episodes in human history.
1:43.8	At present, the Cambodian army is losing a war, not just a battle, but the entire war.
	...

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