Sitting in front of the remains of the altar in their temple known as the Turtle Wat, located ...

Sitting in front of the remains of the altar in their temple known as the Turtle Wat, located just outside Battambang, these four nuns have helped to reestablish a religious community in an area renowned for being used as an execution site by the Khmer Rouge. Behind them, a shattered figure of the Buddha leans against the wall behind a makeshift altar on which has been placed flowers and incense. Door or window frames have been torn out, leaving uneven gaping holes in the rear wall which is covered in Khmer graffiti, and includes three depictions of the Buddha with a halo behind his head. A wat on the next hill was a Khmer Rouge killing site and still lies abandoned, as does a meditation cave nearby which was used to dump thousands of bodies. Buddhist monks and nuns were singled out for particularly brutal treatment during the 1976-1979 period of autogenocide for being 'incompatible with the revolution'. Tens of thousands were expelled from their wats which were systematically destroyed and it is estimated that 50,000 died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. These four nuns have their own stories of the vicious treatment they received; the nun second from the right had her shoulders smashed with a rifle butt and one of her hands mutilated, but it is this very treatment that allows them to understand and help those who come to them for help. The Khmer community is responding to the spiritual guidance offered by this order and the Turtle Wat is slowly becoming a centre of healing, especially after Theravada Buddhism was reinstituted as the state religion in 1989.