Footnote

a Says the National Geographic of October 1980: “Other Communist countries curb religion; Albania forbids it, proclaiming itself in 1967 ‘the first atheistic state in the world.’ All 2,169 mosques, churches, monasteries, and other ‘centers of obscurantism and mysticism’ have been closed, torn down, or transformed into recreation centers, clinics, warehouses, or stables. . . . Albania’s new generation knows only atheism.”

Also, Time magazine of November 17, 1980, said about Cambodia, now called Kampuchea: “The Khmer Rouge began methodical destruction of every vestige of religion. Christian ministers were slaughtered and Muslim mosques destroyed. The greatest indignities, however, were reserved for Buddhists, who constituted 90% of Kampuchea’s population. Insurgents fresh from the jungle looted the country’s 2,800 temples. ‘Buddhas were thrown into rivers or used as firewood,’ recalls Oum Soum, 62, deputy director of Phnom-Penh’s Buddhist Institute. ‘Wats [temples] not destroyed became fertilizer warehouses.’ Bonzes [monks] were denounced as ‘parasites.’ The lucky ones were merely driven from their temples into the fields. Of 80,000 Cambodian monks, 50,000 were murdered.”—P. 90.