Thursday, April 09, 2009

'Torture chief no monster'

April 8, 2009
AFP

PHNOM PENH - A FRENCH researcher who survived detention by the Khmer Rouge told a court on Wednesday that the regime's prison chief was not a monster, but instead was a revolutionary on a 'mission'.

Francois Bizot, who wrote the best-selling book The Gate about his experiences under the communist movement, stared at his hands as he told the tribunal about his interrogation by Duch at a jungle prison camp.

'Until then I thought I was in the right part of humanity, that there were monsters (like Duch) whom I would never resemble,' Bizot, an anthropologist, told the UN-backed court.

'(But) I had in front of me a man, a communist, a Marxist, like many of the friends I had in Paris, ready to give his life for the revolution, and who would accomplish the mission he had been given.'

Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, last week apologised at his trial, accepting blame for the later extermination of 15,000 people who passed through the Khmer Rouge regime's main prison, Tuol Sleng.

The court this week is hearing about M-13, which Duch ran during the 1971 to 1975 Khmer Rouge insurgency against the then US-backed government, to better understand Tuol Sleng's organising structure.

Bizot testified that he met Duch at M-13 after Khmer Rouge revolutionaries arrested him and two Cambodian colleagues 38 years ago, on suspicion of espionage.

'This looked like a camp from which you would never return,' Bizot said. The 69-year-old said that because he was a foreigner he was the best treated of 50 prisoners at M-13, where inmates were shackled to a bar and wracked with malaria.

Bizot said he was never beaten and Duch spoke to him politely, making him write several statements of innocence.

'From all of what I've seen and remembered, his job was to write up reports on the people sent to him for execution purposes,' Bizot told the court.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bizot, You just try to protect the Monster! Bustard! You have been insulted the victims. If you were in S-21 Duch would kill you staight away, Duch had power not to kill and not to punished to his fellow prisoners but he just loved killings. When he is in the cage of course he has shown to be innocent.

Anonymous said...

Indeed Communism(Marxism)and Revolution changed Duch and others into monsters. In fact Communism, Marxism/Leninisim together with their creators, Marx, Lenin and Mao, are being tried by the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. Pol Pot and other Khmer Rouge leaders and cadres were simply applying very well this inhuman ideology.

LAO Mong Hay, Hong Kong

Anonymous said...

No excuse! any mass killings were operated on innocent Camboidan under what ever circumstances must be the Monsters! It was a black State and this prison chief was a double monster.

Anonymous said...

capitalist finance communist.

Anonymous said...

What is the definition of a monster? One who is indifferent to the pain or suffering he/she is causing to others.

Communism is an amalgam of German ideology, French socialism and the surveyed condition of the English working classes. It is essentially, an offshoot of the European Enlightenment; that Age of Reason and philosophical critique that represented a social backlash against the darkness of ignorance and superstition permeating society over the centuries.

We know that rationalism or rationality itself does not always lead to humanity, and it is this dark side of reason that Mary Shelly’s fictional monster presumably insinuates.

Anyway, it would be erroneous to blame a given ideology for the deeds it has inspired. What is written down is rarely uniformly interpreted; the meaning of a text is derived through the medium of our particular intellectual prism.

Most academics today acknowledge the influence Marxian thought has exerted on the thinking on welfare reforms and in the field of social sciences which ironically has helped to preserve the capitalist order so inimical to Marx himself.

Had Bizot met Pol Pot he might have fallen under his spell too. Soft-spoken, well-bred, soft-hands, Pol Pot, it could be said, bore the demeanor of an ascetic rather than a revolutionist, let alone a monster.

Ho Chi Minh was another charismatic leader who also adopted Marxist-Leninist doctrine (his biographer relates how young Ho jumped up and down in his room with enthusiasm the moment he discovered a piece of Marxist literature). Yet, the Vietnamese communists have arguably been far more expedient and humane in the way they have gone about establishing and maintaining their rule since 1975 compared to their DK counterpart.

It is of scant comfort to his victims to learn how Duch was merely a sincere soul who found himself caught up in the killing machine that was the KR.

Cambodians traditionally hold high esteem for teachers and educators; a role that was once performed by Gotama Himself. Having instructed others on how to think and what to question, he would have been much better placed than most to deem which path was right and which was wrong for himself and his country.

MP