The Rafto Foundation is deeply saddened by the death of Preah Maha Ghosananda, the Cambodian Rafto Laureate from 1992. Ghosananda passed away March 12, 2007 almost 80 years old. With the spiritual strength of his Buddhist belief, he emphasised peace and reconciliation as the remedy for Cambodia’s deep wounds after the Khmer Rouge terror. (21-MAR-07)


Text: Kjartan Rødland on behalf of the Rafto Foundation. Reworked and translated by Anne Marte Amble. Published by Gunta Venge at the Rafo Human Rights House, Bergen.

Healing the scars after the Khmer Rouge

Despite his humble appearance, the monk that arrived Bergen on a cold November night in 1992 to receive the Rafto Prize, was a man of almost prophetic religious and political significance in his country. After the end of the Khmer Rouge terror, Ghosananda was elected by the surviving 3,000 Buddhist monks as the Supreme Buddhist Patriarch of Cambodia in 1988. This was a profound acknowledgement of his efforts to revive Buddhism in a country where Pol Pot claimed to have erased religion for good. As an unarmed yet persistent soldier in the fight for human rights, Ghosananda helped to restore the Cambodian nation state, and dreamt of the permanent abolishment of all arms.  

Peaceful Cambodia was drawn into the maelstrom of big politics in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, and saw the long-awaited peace turn into a blood bath when the Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975 and initiated its horrific purges. Buddhist monks were viewed as part of the intellectual class, and given especially brutal treatment. Many were forced to disrobe and become peasants, others were tortured and murdered, and some, like Ghosananda, managed to flee the country. He was also among the first to return from exile when the murderous regime was driven out by the Vietnamese in 1979.

Ghosananda’s message was one of simplicity. He wanted his country to return to its Buddhist tradition, and strived to reach this goal with peaceful means and in the spirit of reconciliation. He founded the Dhamma Yatra movement, and through these peace marches or pilgrimages throughout the country, he brought religion and faith back to the suffering Cambodian nation. When he received the Rafto Prize in 1992, his journey had almost been completed – Ghosananda had literally walked through the country to spread his vision in an effort to restore its spirit. 1993 saw the first democratic elections, and slowly but surely, the wounds were healing. 

A few years after the award ceremony in 1992, a dignified elderly man knocked on the door of the Rafto Foundation. It was Ghosananda, who was in Norway and wanted to pay his Rafto friends a visit. After sharing good memories and planting a tree in the Rafto garden, Ghosananda left, just as quietly as he had arrived. This unannounced visit clearly illustrates the peaceful and humble way in which Ghosananda championed his cause, and stands out as one of the dearest memories in the Rafto Foundation’s 20 year long history. It also shows the universality of Ghosananda’s philosophy, in which years of exile were endured, and friendships were made across vast geographical distances. People are the same, in Phnom Penh, in the USA, and in Bergen – sharing the same rights under the same sky.

Ghosananda died in Rhode Island on March 12, 2007.