The communist Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, on April 17, 1975. Radha Manickam, a new Christian, watched them arrive from the balcony of his parents’ apartment.

It was Radha’s first exposure to the Khmer Rouge. The leader of the Khmer Rouge was Pol Pot, led the most violent and brutal government in modern history. In its doomed attempt to create an agrarian utopia, between 1975 and 1979 Pol Pot’s regime murdered over 1.7 million people. Many were beaten to death or executed. Others starved to death or died of fatigue or some wretched disease. Mao and Stalin’s Communist regimes killed far more people. But no other government has destroyed nearly a quarter of its own citizens.

Today Pol Pot is largely forgotten. But he and the Khmer Rouge are well worth remembering. Because the ideas that formed the Khmer Rouge are still with us today. Also worth remembering are the stories of those who survived. People like Radha Manickam. We’ll be telling his story over the next three episodes. It is in many ways a brutal story. One of loss and grief and terror. But it’s also a story of hope and grace. And ultimately, redemption.

This series is based on my recent interviews with Radha, along with my 2016 book about his experiences. The book and this series are titled “Intended for Evil” by Les Sillars.

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On December 8 the Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, known as HTS, overthrew the brutal government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. There’s a new regime in Damascus, but in northeast Syria a lot remains the same. It’s still one of the most chaotic places in the world. WORLD correspondent Caleb Welde traveled around the region in November of 2023 with the Free Burma Rangers. That’s a Christian aid group working in some of the world’s most dangerous war zones.

This is the first of two episodes based on Caleb’s reporting last year. Today Caleb will tell us the story of a Syrian woman named Hawler Sheikhe. She was 13 years old when ISIS roared into Syria in 2014. But when ISIS forced her to flee her home, she found herself on a journey that would eventually lead her to Christ– and beatings, bombings, and death threats.

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