No Old People!

One of the things that you notice in Cambodia is the lack of old people. I met and photographed a few older people but not many. I believe the reason there are not many old folks around is because most of them died during the Khmer Rouge period (1.7 million people died in 4 years). The Vietnamese invaded and ended the Khmer Rouge mass murder in 1979, so that means anyone in Cambodia over 32 years of age lived during that period, most everyone in the country has lost family members. Imagine that, almost every Khmer person currently alive in Cambodia has lost family members to the Khmer Rouge or maybe they were the Khmer Rouge soldiers doing the killing, how does a country recover from that level of genocide?

Currently in Cambodia there are war crimes trials going on but they are only going after the top 4 or 5 people (all old men). The current head of the country Hun Sen is a former Khmer Rouge member so obviously they do not want to open to many doors and let out to many secrets otherwise those in charge of the current dictatorship might be implicated.