Khmer Rouge chief torturer weeps for 14,000 victims

Wed Feb 27, 2008
By Ek Madra

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - The chief Khmer Rouge torturer on Wednesday led judges who will try him for crimes against humanity around the jail where about 14,000 presumed opponents of the ruthless revolutionaries were killed under his supervision.

Reporters were kept well away from the Tuol Sleng high school which became the Khmer Rouge "S-21" jail, but the judges and other officials of the U.N.-backed tribunal due to try Pol Pot's chief henchmen probably blanched at the sight.

Now a museum, photographs of terrified prisoners taken on their arrival cover walls. Concrete floored rooms contain only a bare iron bedstead and torture equipment. Some still have dried blood on the floor.

Men, women, children and even a few foreigners accused of being CIA spies went into the jail. They were tortured and forced to write confession after confession -- most still carefully catalogued -- until jailers were satisfied.

Nearly all were then killed. Only a handful survived until an invading Vietnamese army took the city in January 1979, ending the Khmer Rouge "Year Zero" revolution to produce an agrarian utopia.

An estimated 1.7 million people were killed or died through overwork, starvation and disease during their four years in power and the tour of the jail was meant to give tribunal officials a sense of what went on there.

A film crew working for the tribunal, due to start actual trials in July, filmed Kaing Guek Eav, 66, known as Duch, as he told the story of the jail he ran for the Khmer Rouge regime, keeping meticulous records, witnesses said.

"He cried again as he walked into his old office. It seems he has remorse for his past life," a police officer who accompanied Duch said.

On Tuesday, Duch wept and prayed for the victims as led the tribunal staff to some of the 129 mass graves of people killed by the Khmer Rouge just outside Phnom Penh.

"I saw Duch kneel in front of the trees where Khmer Rouge soldiers smashed children to death," said a policeman who watched. "He cried and apologized to the victims."

Duch, detained in 1999 and now a Christian, is expected to be a key witness in the trials. His lawyers say he was only following orders.

The others arrested and charged with crimes against humanity are "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea, right hand man to Pol Pot who died in 1998, Khieu Samphan, president under the regime, Ieng Sary, its foreign minister, and his wife.

All face life in jail.

Many Cambodians want to hear what Duch will have to say in court.

"I still do not understand why Duch jailed me, killed my wife and our baby," said Chum Manh, 78, one of the few survivors of Tuol Sleng.

(Editing by Michael Battye and Sanjeev Miglani)

Photographers claim foreigners killed in Pol Pot's prison

Wed, 12 Sep 2007
DPA

Phnom Penh - Although 79 foreigners and hundreds more Vietnamese prisoners of war are known to have died in Pol Pot's secret prison, the real toll is even grimmer, two former photographers from S-21 claimed this week. From his present provincial home south of the capital, former photographer Nim Im, charged with documenting in pictures the thousands of prisoners who were tortured or killed at S-21 or Toul Sleng, remembered a New Zealander, a Cuban, a Swiss, their Thai boat driver and more who he says may have simply disappeared from the records.

"There were a lot. I particularly remember the Cuban. It was 1977. He had a camera and they seized it. He was young. He had a beard. They took him from the sea," Im says. "Mostly I remember he looked sad. Just sad, not screaming ... he was killed and burned."

Also known as Nim Kimsreang, Im, 55, was believed by many, including Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC Cam) director Youk Chhang, to be dead. Instead, he was serving a jail sentence for beating a neighbour to death in 1997 and has just been released.

DC Cam's painstaking records show one New Zealand victim in 1978, as well as US, Australians, Lao, French, Thais, a Javanese and Indians. However, no Cubans or Swiss nationals are recorded, though historians admit some records are missing or incomplete.

Im's claims and his recollections of life at the former high school converted into one of the most notorious prisons in the world by the Khmer Rouge during its 1975-79 Democratic Kampuchea rule sheds new light on life in the capital under the insular regime.

They may also give some families closure who have wondered what happened to their disappeared for three decades.

Nim Im's former colleague Nhem En corroborated Im's claims that more foreigners disappeared, apparently without trace, inside S-21.

"I believe not all the documents were left. I remember the group of foreigners in 1977. They were seized off the coast with a detailed map and cameras. There was a Thai with them too," Em says.

At his home in an interview this week, Im cooly detailed how the documentation at S-21 became more sophisticated and the consequences of passing through its gates more dire as the regime progressed.

"In 1977 we didn't hang plaques around most of their necks. We just photographed them. Later, we documented them much more carefully. In 1977, many, many of them were sent to jail in Prey Sar if Duch decided they had no mistake. Later, more came, and more had mistakes," Im says.

Duch, alias Kang Kech Iev, was the commandant of S-21. He has been formally charged with crimes against humanity by the 56-million-dollar joint UN-Cambodia Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia which has been set up to try a handful of surviving leaders and is expected to face court next year.

Historian and author of Voices from S-21, David Chandler, has estimated around 14,000 people were processed at the prison. Only a handful of survivors remain.

But Im remembers his revolution differently to the thousands who died after entering S-21 and the million or so more who were starved or worked to death around the country. He lived beside one of Phnom Penh's main markets, Psar Thmei, and a stroll from a bakery which provided fresh pastries and rolls for the elite.

He went to work by bicycle or motorbike. "Most days you would only see one car," he remembers. After work, he would take dinner and go home to his apartment.

Up to 2 million Cambodians died during the Democratic Kampuchea regime of starvation, disease, overwork, torture or execution. Im, who served in a provincial village militia before becoming a photographer and whose Phnom Penh base was ironically titled the International Photo Shop, claims he saw none of the crimes against humanity.

The ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge virtually emptied the cities and sent millions to the fields in an attempt to turn the country into an agrarian utopia.

Im says he doesn't have any opinion on the regime now. He remembers Duch as a man who, like himself, followed orders and did what he was told. From whom he says he doesn't know.

But he does recall the strange foreigners at S-21. He says he still remembers them, even if the documents that prove they were once there have disappeared. "A lot of people disappeared," he shrugs.