Apology to the animals from Brother #2

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

“Known as Brother Number Two to the
late Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, Nuon Chea was
architect of the brutal forced evacuation of
Cambodian cities in 1975,” Seth Mydans of T h e
New York Times reported on December 29 from
Phnom Penh. “Chea later had command responsibility
over a wave of purges in which many thousands of
people were tortured and killed.”
Now 71, Chea was asked by Englishspeaking
reporters at a news conference following his
surrender to the government of current Cambodian
prime minister Hun Sen if he had apologies to make.

Replied Chea, “We are very sorry not only
for the lives of the people of Cambodia, but even for
the lives of all the animals who suffered because of
the war.”
Wrote Mydans, “Some Cambodians said
the remark reflected a Buddhist pacifist theology that
values the lives of all living things.”
Nuon Chea’s repression of Buddhism was
especially violent. More than a million Cambodians,
most of them Buddhists, were massacred during the
years of Khmer Rouge rule, 1975-1979.