One day, Duch brought in another prisoner and told him to make a sculpture of the mysterious Pol Pot. But it turned out the prisoner didn’t know how to sculpt; he was just trying his luck. He was never seen again. Another prisoner, a Vietnamese man, claimed that he could make paraffin-wax molds. When he failed at his attempt, Duch got angry and had one of his interrogators hit the prisoner. He was taken away and never seen again. Next, a Japanese prisoner tried to save himself by joining the artists’ studio, but it was also in vain.
THE STUDIO WAS AT THE END of Building E, the smallest, central prong of the former school’s five buildings laid out like a trident. The entrance at one end of this modest house, which feels a little overwhelmed by the four large, three-story blocks surrounding it, was where Suor Thi met prisoners as they first arrived and took their photographs. The shutters on the windows at the other end of the building, where the studio was located, usually stayed shut. Vann Nath heard screams on an almost daily basis. He was shocked at first. But gradually, he grew accustomed to them.
Prison life improved substantially for the artists. Instead of miserable gruel, they ate rice, the same diet as the guards. “I even had noodle soup,” says Bou Meng. They slept unshackled in the generator room behind Building E with four other prisoners taken from the cells “for use” by the prison’s administration or the regime. They could hear the trucks coming and going from the gate, but they couldn’t see anything. The artists were locked in their studio. There was no guard in there with them, but the system was set up so that each prisoner knew as little as possible, and nothing filtered out.
Bou Meng requested three months to produce a three-by-five-meter portrait of Pol Pot. Duch ordered him to fix the leader’s throat, telling the artist to get rid of a lump that looked like a tumor. When Bou Meng mentions this in court, Duch gives a slight smile. He also instructed Bou Meng to fix the lips. “I survived because I was able to paint a faithful portrait of Pol Pot.”
For Duch, who had taken his revolutionary name from a sculptor, the studio became a place of refuge. He visited almost every day. Each time he entered the room, the artists had to move to its far end and wait for his orders. Though he appreciated their work and often complimented it, the artists remained frightened of him. He never hid his displeasure when they fell behind schedule. Still, Vann Nath couldn’t bring himself to believe that Duch was capable of putting people to death. “He was an intelligent, attentive man. He made you aware of his power. But he never did anything whatsoever to frighten us. He was respectful.”
DURING A TRIAL RECESS, Duch holds a long conversation with his Cambodian lawyer, Kar Savuth, who, as is his habit, is resting on one of the chairs in the courtroom. Duch gives a short laugh, revealing his famously bad teeth. He lifts his head, and for a moment his bright, wide-eyed gaze freezes. Then, apparently in a talkative mood, he turns away to talk to his French defense team.
While Vann Nath testifies, Duch’s expression is inscrutable, as though he has withdrawn into his shell. He still has some influence over his former subordinates, but he has no authority whatsoever over the painter. Vann Nath rubs his belly and kneads his handkerchief. With his jowls and heavy eyelids, he looks like a sad tortoise. Throughout 1978, the painter tried to produce his best work and to do what was asked of him, he says in his deep and slightly nasal voice. He had only one goal: “To survive.” One day toward noon, Vann Nath got the feeling that they were being watched, and had been for some time. He felt a surge of fear when Bou Meng was summoned. Bou Meng left the studio and didn’t come back. Vann Nath says he naively thought that his fellow artist had been released and sent back to a co-op. But two weeks later, he heard someone call out and the sound of chains scraping along the ground. In the doorway stood Bou Meng in chains, his skin pale and his hair long. Brother East stood behind him. “He said, ‘a-Meng, what did you promise? Get on your knees and apologize to all of us.’”
With typical gallows humor, Duch asked whether Meng was still of any use or whether he should be turned into fertilizer.
Duch pays close attention to Vann Nath during his testimony. He listens carefully with his mouth slightly open, as though astonished by what he is hearing. There aren’t many witnesses like Vann Nath: sober, firm, clear, and scrupulous, always taking pains to point out when he personally witnessed something and when he didn’t. His testimony is both factual and charged with emotion. He exudes a natural dignity. For the past three decades, Vann Nath has devoted much of his time to advocating on behalf of S-21’s fourteen thousand victims. He has acquired a unique stature in the country. Even when Duch disagrees with what Vann Nath remembers, he doesn’t challenge the painter.
But Bou Meng doesn’t recall the incident, or if he does, he remembers it differently. “My memory isn’t in perfect shape,” he had warned at the start of his testimony. Of the three still-living survivors of S-21, Bou Meng, with his hearing aid and virtually toothless smile, is the one who bears the most obvious scars of the violence he suffered in the prison. Several times, he is reminded in court of that serious incident in the studio. But he fails to understand what he’s being asked, or else he dodges the question, or says he has forgotten, or even flat-out denies it ever happened.
Bou Meng and Vann Nath are two honest men who share a deep bond of solidarity after having endured hell together, who saw and heard the most terrifying sights and sounds of their lives together, yet whose memories disagree on whether one of them was abused on that day, or not, or to what degree. Bou Meng sums it up enigmatically: “Even an elephant with four feet sometimes collapses.”
We don’t always need to understand everything.
BOU MENG, THE CONTEMPTIBLE A-MENG, with his disproportioned, broken, stunted, almost-deformed body, his back and shoulders covered in scars, his toothless face, his pierced eardrums, says what he knows, says what he doesn’t know, and says what he thinks he knows. Those years of terrifying lies and slander seem to have inured him against taking the truth lightly. They made him a man of principle, one who still bears the scars of a savage and bloody scheme.
“I wouldn’t seem so old if I hadn’t been tortured,” he says.
Then, having taken stock of his own state, he pokes fun at his friend and fellow survivor, who is ten years older: “But Chum Mey is still young!”
Bou Meng has a disconcerting ability to laugh at the slights—even the well-intentioned ones—of his fellow man. Like when he describes how he was electrocuted, and a lawyer representing the civil parties asks him, “How long were you unconscious?”
Bou Meng bursts out laughing. “You can’t tell how long you’ve been unconscious if you’re unconscious!”
This humble man is ridiculing the smugly superior lawyer; a cheerful sound rises from the public gallery.
Bou Meng doesn’t recall the episode in the studio, but he remembers other abuses. He hasn’t forgotten the day when Duch, while visiting the imprisoned artists, ordered him to fight an ethnically Chinese sculptor with a plastic pipe.
Bou Meng remembers this brawl clearly: a year before the start of Duch’s trial, he tried to recreate it for the investigating judges, when they were reconstructing events at S-21. A crowd of people had gathered in the former artists’ studio; Bou Meng grabbed a white plastic chair, put it in the center of the crowd, and mimicked the way Duch sat when he used to watch Bou Meng paint: leaning back comfortably, one leg crossed squarely over the other. Bou Meng smiled at his own performance and pointed a finger at Duch to show how the jailer used to offer him cigarettes. This unorthodox but powerful gesture epitomizes the influence the former prisoner now holds over his jailer. A short, twitching laugh lights up the crevices of Bou Meng’s face.
“And then what happened?” asked the investigating judge.
“He ordered us to hit each other in turn. I don’t know why.”
“And you did it?”
“Yes, yes,” said Bou Meng, smiling.
“Did you hit hard?”
“I don’t have any scars
left from it, but it hurt a lot.”
“Is that true?” said the magistrate, turning to Duch.
“Yes. I told them to hit one another.”
“Why?”
“I’ve forgotten the reason.”
“Was there no particular reason?”
“I don’t remember. Perhaps there was no particular reason.”
When the psychologists interviewed Duch about this incident, he said he wanted to meet with his confessor first. If there ever was a reason, it remains a mystery.
Duch wasn’t the only one who enjoyed humiliating Bou Meng. The guard Him Huy also wasn’t able to resist indulging in a little prison-camp humor in front of his fellow guards.
“Let me put it this way,” he tells the court, embarrassed. “Everyone would make comments about his size, about how small he was; they used to mock him and ask him how he managed to have a wife.”
One day, the young prison guard’s mocking went much further. Him Huy heaved himself onto a-Meng’s shoulders and rode the prisoner like a horse, goading him to prove his strength.
“You found this funny?” says Roux.
“Back then, we used to chat among ourselves. I got on his shoulders to see if he could carry me. I just wanted to test his strength, that’s all.”
“Do you think he found it funny?”
“He used to say that he was strong and that he could carry me. I didn’t threaten him in any way.”
Bou Meng rubs his head.
“I didn’t mean to harm him. I did it just for laughs,” adds Him Huy.
Bou Meng says that he’s delighted to have had the opportunity to testify. He feels relieved, lighter. He believes that justice will be done for the millions of victims of the Khmer Rouge. The only question he wants to ask Kaing Guek Eav is: “Where was my wife killed? At S-21? At Choeung Ek? Or somewhere else?”
Bou Meng needs to know in order to go there and pray for her.
“I would like this affair to be resolved quickly,” he adds.
Duch gets to his feet.
Mister Meng, you have touched me deeply. I was shocked when I saw you again in February 2008. I wish I could answer your question, but the answer lies beyond my knowledge. My subordinates were in charge of these things. I can only presume that your wife was killed at Choeung Ek. Please accept my highest consideration and respect for your wife’s soul.
Duch’s face tenses up into an expression set somewhere between astonishment and grief—his awkward way of showing distress. He turns his head bashfully and sniffs. He leans on the desk, his arms trembling. He sits down. Bou Meng is holding his head in his hands. He rubs more balm into his forehead. Bou Meng is a tiny man, his body crippled by torments inflicted by both nature and his fellow man; the pain of his memories and past suffering proves too much, and he, too, breaks down. This flood of emotion flusters the presiding judge, who tries to fill the silence with a steady flow of empty words. There’s a new sadness in Duch’s eyes, one that first appeared a few weeks earlier, when another victim was mentioned.
FROM OCTOBER 1978 ON, the prison was a lot quieter, says Vann Nath. The armed conflict with the Vietnamese meant the regime had to put a stop to its internal purges and concentrate on fighting the external enemy rather than the one supposedly lurking within. On January 3, 1979, the last truck returned from the killing fields, and the prison was empty.
“The interrogations stopped. We were idle. We stayed inside the compound. All the prisoners were liquidated,” says Prak Khan.
All except the ones that had been “kept for use,” such as the painters and Chum Mey. After his twelve days of torture, Chum Mey was led back to his cell on the top floor of the south building. The S-21 leadership realized it needed a handyman. Chum Mey, who felt as though he’d been in death’s antechamber, now found himself working in the mechanic’s workshop. His job was to repair the prison’s machines, including the typewriters used to write the confessions his fellow inmates made after being electroshocked. Chum Mey shared his bunk with Thoeun, the dentist. There were four or five of them working in that other workshop, the one Duch never visited, behind the prison’s main buildings.
Toward noon on January 7, one year to the day after he arrived at S-21, Vann Nath heard gunfire. He and a dozen other prisoners gathered in the studio. A handful of guards came to fetch them and ordered them out. They marched single-file, trembling with fear, across Tuol Tom Pong, known today as the “Russian Market.” They passed Prey Sar, the S-24 reeducation camp linked to S-21; they marched through the night, were separated from one another, then found each other again in the morning, when they reached National Highway 4. At Prey Sar, Chum Mey, who had been arrested only two months previously, was miraculously reunited with his wife and their newborn baby. They fled together. A Vietnamese military convoy appeared. Gunfire erupted. The S-21 guards ran off. The group scattered. Vann Nath found himself on the roadside, terrified, along with three other ex-prisoners. They wanted to go back to Phnom Penh, but they feared that the Vietnamese would kill them, and they didn’t return until January 10. Chum Mey, meanwhile, had gone his own way with his family and another S-21 prisoner who had been spared “for use.” They were captured by a band of Khmer Rouge. Another gun battle erupted, and Chum Mey’s wife and the fellow prisoner were shot. Chum Mey also lost his baby while fleeing. He went back to Phnom Penh alone and found Vann Nath, Bou Meng, and four other survivors of S-21.
They were free. Chum Mey’s and Bou Meng’s wives and children were dead. Vann Nath’s wife survived. Their two children, one five years old and the other six months, did not. Thirty years later, these three men are the only living survivors who can bear witness to what took place at S-21.
“I tried to let go,” says Vann Nath,
but the suffering I endured there isn’t easy to forget. My memories still haunt me. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget what happened to me. I never imagined that one day I would be sitting in this courtroom. It’s a privilege and an honor. I want nothing more. Usually, plaintiffs ask for some sort of reparation. But I’m not asking for any compensation. I want only one thing, something intangible: justice for those who died. That is what I hope this tribunal will bring. Sometimes, I grow tired of telling people how I suffered. But then I remember that it’s about revealing the truth, about transmitting it to the younger generation, and my weariness is lifted.
The back of the painter’s skull is unusually raised, which adds to the grace of his height. He slips on a navy jacket against the air-conditioned chill. Leaving the courtroom with dignity and confidence, he gives the impression of being a visitor from some mysterious, rarified world of sages.*
CHAPTER 19
DUCH FIRST BECAME INTERESTED IN POLITICS AT THE AGE OF FIFTEEN. He heard about the Revolution in China, where Mao Zedong had seized power eight years previously, in 1949. The Chinese premier, Zhou Enlai, visited Cambodia in 1956. Duch, who has Chinese ancestry, drew a certain pride from this visit by an eminent Chinese politician to a Cambodia in which the ethnic Chinese sometimes faced discrimination. One of his teachers, Ke Kim Huot, gave him a few books about the situation of peasants and workers. Cambodian independence, recognized by France in 1953, was still fresh in people’s minds. King Norodom Sihanouk was a major figure in the inchoate Non-Aligned Movement. North Vietnam’s Communists had just won a stunning victory over the French colonists. Anything seemed possible. Duch read everything handed to him and everything he could get his hands on. His reading wasn’t confined to politics—he was interested in Buddhism as well. Duch needed to admire people in order to act and to move forward in life. He sought masters and mentors, and the first of these were Buddhist monks, whom he respected and with whom he lived and studied.
At this decisive age, teenage Duch became aware of his family’s social standing and of how men economically exploited others: his father, for example, was indebted to a moneylender uncle. Kaing Guek Eav began to discover, through his reading and thanks to certain teachers, that there existed an
alternative system, one that claimed to eradicate the exploitation of man by man. Communism, then ascendant in many places throughout the world, seduced a number of young Cambodian intellectuals who were in revolt against the social inequality, corruption, injustice, and authoritarianism of the monarchical system.
In 1958, Duch, along with two other boys and two girls, founded a little study group. Duch was very close to one of the girls, Sou Sath. In court, it takes Sou Sath all of two minutes to paint a verbal portrait of Kaing Guek Eav: he was a kind and generous young man; a good student; someone with no secrets, who gladly shared his knowledge; someone whom everyone in the classroom knew but who had only a few real friends; who supported others in their studies; who never fought with anyone; who respected his teachers; who never skipped class.
A faint, almost affectionate smile appears on Duch’s face. For a few moments, he’s distracted by two latecomers making their way through the public gallery. He turns his gaze back to his old friend. Sou Sath doesn’t understand one of the questions she is asked. She smiles. Duch does, too. An ancient, calm breeze blows between them, a tender air from the times past, the scent of an old and innocent friendship. Sou Sath, a retired teacher and former activist with the Cambodian League for Human Rights, resurrects, with her confident and frank words, the man who existed before Duch, the man he was before this damned Revolution.
“He wasn’t the only good student. I was, too. He wasn’t the leader of the study group. There wasn’t one,” she says cheerfully and confidently.
Duch, a prudish man, confided that he worried that frivolous games would sidetrack the study group. The group members therefore decided to address one another as “brother” and “sister.” Sou Sath was called “aunt.” This was to avoid any “sentimental feelings that might lead to amorous incidents.” Sou Sath says that she was unaware at the time that Duch had suffered a romantic disappointment. She laughs about it now and glances at him. He laughs in turn. Their shared world has remained intact, fresh, and bursting with life like a rice paddy after the monsoon. She asks if she can see him in his cell after her deposition. Ten minutes at most, she says.
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