The Anthropology Of Genocide - WNLibrary

280 genocide’s wake
that the population over twenty years of age was 48 percent male and 56 percent
female, and the 1998 census showed a national population (including all age groups)
that was 51.8 percent female (United Nations Population Fund 1995:5–7; National
Institute of Statistics 1999). We believe that it is difficult to explain this rapid balancing
out of the sex ratio simply in terms of a high birth rate producing more
male babies. Rather we suspect that adult males were undercounted everywhere in
earlier censuses because they were away from home for a variety of reasons: they
were in the government army, or had joined antigovernment resistance groups in
northwestern Cambodia, or were in refugee camps in Thailand, or had been sent
abroad by the government to get various kinds of technical training, or had been
hiding somewhere to avoid conscription. (Examples of virtually all of these can be
found in Svay.) The return of the men, as well as a healthy birth rate of 2.5 to 3
percent over the past fifteen or so years (such that 47 percent of the current population
is under fifteen years of age), has thus made the sex ratio and household composition
more normal in the country as a whole (United Nations Population Fund
1995:5–7; National Institute of Statistics 1999).
AFTERMATHS: THE REVIVAL OF BUDDHISM
Another aspect of DK’s attempt to turn people’s loyalties exclusively to the state
was the effort to destroy Buddhism. Buddhist monks were forced to disrobe and
even were executed, while Buddhist temples were either demolished or desecrated
by being put to menial uses as, for example, pigsties or storehouses. Thus in 1979,
at the beginning of the PRK period, there was a grave shortage of both religious
sites and personnel. Although the government allowed Buddhism to be revived, it
was limited both by state policy and by lack of material resources. The PRK initially
stipulated that only men over fifty could become monks because young males
were needed for agricultural labor and for the military. Communities had to apply
for permission to reconstruct temple compounds, and funds for construction (raised
through ceremonies and through soliciting donations) had to be used first and foremost
to rebuild temple schools and only secondarily to restore the temples themselves.
As Keyes has written: “Buddhism was still viewed in Marxist terms as having
a potential for offering people ‘unhealthy beliefs’ ” (1994:62). Given such
circumstances, there is a question as to whether an entire generation of Cambodians
who were children during DK and adolescents during PRK lacked exposure
to, and hence became estranged from, Buddhism.
In 1989 the State of Cambodia formally designated Therevada Buddhism as
being once again the state religion, as it had been prior to DK, and broadcasts of
daily prayers were immediately revived on the national radio. Buddhism blossomed
throughout the 1990s. The hierarchy of Buddhist monks was reinstated; young men
and boys were again allowed to become monks and novices; Pali schools for monks
reopened around the country; and Buddhist texts are being reprinted and distributed
with the help of Japanese and German funding. The number of monks, esti-