Remaining Right Side of the Buddha, The

|     |     |     |     |     |       The Remaining Right Side of the Buddha by Gregg Butensky all photos © Gregg Butensky When the Australian journalist, John Pilger, arrived in Cambodia in the summer of 1979, the Khmer Rouge had already been out of power for eight months; their brutal rule brought to an end by a Vietnamese led invasion. By that time, only three relief planes had arrived from the West. Flying into Cambodia, Pilger described the scene; My aircraft flew low, following the unravelling of the Mekong River west from Vietnam. Once over Cambodia, there appeared to be no-one, no movement, not even an animal, as if the great population of Asia stopped at the border. Nothing seemed to have been planted nor was growing, except the forest, and the mangrove and lines of tall wild grass. On the edge of towns this grass would follow straight lines, as though planted. Fertilized by human compost - by the remains of thousands upon thousands of men, women and children - those lines marked common graves in a nation where as many as a million-and-a-half people, one fifth of the population, were 'missing'. (Return to Year Zero, New Internationalist, April 1993) On the day of my arrival in Phnom Penh, many people were heading in the opposite direction - out of the country. On that day, Saturday, May 15, 1993, all UNTAC (United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambo...