Buddhism has been, through the centuries,
the basis of Cambodian culture.
On April 17th, 1975,
Pol Pot took power
and one of the first things he did
was to prohibit and persecute religion.
We know very little about the horror
that buddhist monks went though
during the three years, eight months
and twenty days that Democratic Kampuchea lasted.
And we risk
their stories being lost forever.
In November, my friend Raquel Vasquez and I
got a scholarship
to investigate about the persecutions
of buddhist monks throughout that period.
We didn´t think twice:
we left everything and, along with this team,
we went and stayed in Cambodia.
Our base camp was in Phnom Penh,
from where we closely followed
the Khmer Rouge trials.
We also investigated to find
buddhist monks of the Pol Pot era
that were still alive and wouldn't be scared
to share their stories and talk
about such a delicate subject.
They were very elderly
and confused dates and places.
Their accounts
were like a puzzle
that we needed to put together.
That's how we went all through Cambodia
and parts of Vietnam, visiting villages,
pagodas and tracking the roads
through which these monks were forced
to emigrate.
We have learnt from buddhist monks
that they went from being spiritual leaders
to leeches in their own society.
They were forced to get married
and consumate these marriages;
they were forced to join the army;
to work as forced labour;
to abandon their beliefs
or keep them internally.
Their family and friends were killed
just for knowing how to read
or just because they were wearing glasses.
The tranquility and even the sense of humour
that they told their story with
never ceased to amaze us.
It's because when you believe that death
is the beginning rather than the end,
you can't allow yourself to feel rage
or revenge because it might be perpetuated
for eternity.
We learnt that buddhism is
the central axis around which
the Cambodian lifestyle revolves.
Everyday Nom PePhnom Penh is died in orange
with all the monks
that move around the city
going from home to home.
Cambodians, who live in a humble way,
share their money and food with them
every day.
It's been a long time:
too long to make justice
and too short to forget.
Now we see, with this perspective,
that violence
against people's identities
is still a tragic reality.
That is why we want to make a contribution
to this public space: the testimonies
of these monks that we have gathered in Cambodia.
(Applause).