Jolydays from hell

"To me he [Nhem En seen with KR memorabilia for sale] was one of the most evil men I ever met and should be locked up, but it turned out he was deputy governor of a district, because the Khmer Rouge are still sort of in charge." - Dom Jolly (Photo: The Phnom Penh Post)

Bargain hunting ... Dom was tempted to buy Khmer Rouge dictator Pol Pot's shoes for £500,000

Monday, September 06, 2010
By DOM JOLY
Excerpt from The Sun (UK)

COMEDIAN and travel writer Dom Joly has journeyed the globe - only to discover that his weird take on life as portrayed in his show Trigger Happy TV is not a patch on bizarre behaviour in the real world. His particular joy is to visit where the average holidaymaker would never dream of going.

Now he has written a book - The Dark Tourist - about his experiences.

Here he takes us through a few of his odder adventures...

I'M not really sure why I have this desire to travel to strange places.

But because I grew up in Lebanon, I always quite liked the fact that people would say: "Oh, that must be dodgy."

I quite liked feeling: "Yeah, I'm a bit tough," whereas I actually knew there are some really nice bits of Lebanon.

Even so, I think that just growing up there naturally gave me a slight adrenalin fixation. I get really bored on normal holidays. I don't like beaches.

I think a lot of the world has been kind of Starbucks-ised.

About the only places you can go to now to learn something new, sadly, are these kind of dodgy places I find so interesting.
CAMBODIA

ON day one I was sitting by the swimming pool and a man came up and said: "Would you like to meet a man selling Pol Pot's shoes?" Of course I would.

So I went with this guy miles out of town to this house. This other guy came in and after we chatted, he fetched some shoes and a camera.

This was the guy who photographed every person who went into the Killing Fields before they were executed by the Khmer Rouge regime in the Seventies.

To me he was one of the most evil men I ever met and should be locked up, but it turned out he was deputy governor of a district, because the Khmer Rouge are still sort of in charge.

He had a picture of himself with Pol Pot, Cambodia's former dictator. I asked him how much the shoes were and they were a snip at half a million pounds!

He claimed if I paid it he would use the money to set up a museum for the victims of the Killing Fields, but I found that very hard to believe.

I found Cambodia a fascinating country of contrasts. There were minefields everywhere, while in other parts backpackers wandered happily. Then someone invites you to pay $500 to blow up a cow with a rocket-propelled grenade, which is a major tourist attraction.

I didn't, by the way.

HBO airs story of Cambodian photographer who turned a blind eye to Khmer Rouge genocide

Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum/HBO

Wednesday, July 8th 2009
By David Hinckley
Daily News (New York, USA)

• THE CONSCIENCE OF NHEM EN
• Wednesday night at 8, HBO

It doesn't take long to explore the conscience of Nhem En.

He doesn't seem to have one.

This chilling documentary, which was nominated for an Oscar earlier this year, takes the viewer on a tour of the infamous 1975-1979 Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia. It's only a half-hour long, but feels as if it goes on for hours because the content is so grim, the sheer inhumanity so difficult to comprehend.

Filmmaker Steven Okazaki focuses on S-21, a high school that was converted into a prison that was really an execution chamber.

Over the four years of the Pol Pot regime, some 1.7 million Cambodians were slaughtered. At S-21, which today is open to the public as a memorial, 17,000 people were processed in. Eight survived.

Prisoners, who included everyone from infants to grandparents, were brought in and tortured until they confessed they were either CIA or KGB operatives - even though many did not know what the CIA or KGB were. They were then further tortured until they "named" at least one other person who was also a CIA or KGB operative.

Then they were executed.

Nhem En, who was 16, was the house photographer. As each prisoner was brought in, he took their picture - a classic mug shot, the prisoner staring into the camera. He estimates he photographed 6,000 prisoners, knowing that all were about to die.

"Conscience" includes other interviews, including two with survivors who recount the deprivation, torture and massacre of their families. One Khmer Rouge soldier is interviewed and says he knew nothing, did nothing, has nothing to say.

But Nhem En is the centerpiece. He is sorry people died, he says, but he had nothing to do with it, didn't even hear it, it happened in another room.

He's not sorry for his role, he says, because he did what was necessary to keep himself alive.

In fact, he says, "The world should thank me" for his work, because without his pictures, no one would remember these people.

It's a surreal moment. But Nhem En is facing, and sidestepping, the question that soldiers on the losing side have faced in almost every war back to the dawn of recorded history.

How could you do it, they are asked, and their replies are often some variation of the one here: Had I not done it, I would have been killed and they would have brought in someone else to do it.

Does the fact that Nhem En is right make his actions right?

"Conscience of Nhem En" starts off chilling and ends up haunting.

dhinckley@nydailynews.com

"The Conscience of Nhem En" On HBO: A Review

Nhem En (Photo: AP)

July 7, 2009
By Elyssa Spitzer
Huffington Post

The Conscience of Nhem En, premiering tonight on HBO at 8:00, tells the story of the havoc - both psychological and physical - that the Khmer Rouge's reign wrecked on the Cambodian people. 1.7 million people died in a supposed effort to seek out CIA and KGB agents within Cambodia from 1975-79. "Very few people were actually guilty," said the documentary's eponymous Nhem En, a photographer who at age 16 took roughly 6,000 photos of prisoners before each headed to a near-certain death. "But each person had to give a name and that person said another name." And in the absurdity of the Khmer Rouge, all those named died.

The story is an important one to tell. Relative to other such human travesties, the Khmer Rouge is not often discussed, (at least in the world I have experienced). Perhaps the silence is the result of an innate sense of guilt Americans feel hearing the tale. The United States was not uninvolved in Pol Pot's rise to power - a point the film drives home within the first half-minute with the subtitles, "During the Vietnam War, the United States carried out massive, covert bombing of Cambodia, contributing to the rise of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge." But whatever the reason the story is not discussed, The Conscience of Nhem En is a certain step to clarity, and in that sense it is worth watching.

The premise of the film is powerful because the reality of the Khmer Rouge is horrifying. Do not watch it if the aim is to see something uplifting that makes you think positively about humanity. This documentary shows the worst of our species, our unfathomable ability to do harm to our own. Skulls are shown, stored in containers en mass. Eerily uniform headshots show thousands of Cambodians headed to their near-certain death. And perhaps most terrifying is the interview with Nhem En in which he unapologetically defends his taking of photos rather than trying to save his muses: "Well, it's human nature... People do what they have to do to survive."

The film seems grey, almost hollow; only in the very beginning and end does music lighten the heavy footage. There are extended moments of silence that leave time for reflection, and the silence is quite uncomfortable. But the discomfort is, I assume, intentional. Watching former prisoners walk through the halls of the Tuol Sleng Prison should not be an undisturbed experience.

The narrative is not told as an emotional one but rather as a straight history; if anything, it is too cold. Men and women list off the family members they lost to Pol Pot. One man lost his parents and all six of his siblings. Another woman lost nine children. No one was untouched. But as they list off the depletion of their families for the camera, none cry. It has become a fact of life for them, and their matter-of-factness when listing off their losses is disconcerting, unnerving. However, to the film's credit, the abysmal is coupled with human resilience. The documentary concerns itself with the past, but it is deeply rooted in the present and the emotional carryover that results from the Khmer Rouge.

Did I enjoy watching The Conscience of Nhem En? No. But I am glad I saw it.

Sacrava's Political Cartoon: my small BAG

Cartoon by Sacrava (on the web at http://sacrava.blogspot.com)

S-21 photographer ditches KR museum

Monday, 18 May 2009
Written by Sam Rith
The Phnom Penh Post

$1m to buy all of the exhibits, says Nhem En.

FORMER Tuol Sleng photographer Nhem En is putting all of his Khmer Rouge-era possessions - once destined for a museum in Anlong Veng - up for sale for US$1 million, saying that the global economic crisis is to blame for scuppering his monument to the regime whose most brutal moments he helped to document.

"I am calling on all interested individuals and companies, both inside and outside the country, to bid on more than 10 varieties of Khmer Rouge materials. The starting price is US$1 million," said Nhem En, who is deputy governor of Anlong Veng district in Oddar Meanchey province.

The items on offer include two cameras purportedly used to photograph prisoners at Tuol Sleng; 2,000 photographs of Pol Pot and other Khmer Rouge leaders; what he claims are Pol Pot's sandals, toilet, clothes and hat; a piece of car tyre that was used in Pol Pot's 1998 cremation; videos of military commander Ta Mok and other top regime cadre; and 1,000 songs on original tapes and pirated CDs.

"I spent all my spare cash trying to build the museum and I can't borrow from the bank because they are suffering from the global economic crisis," he said.

Nhem En said he had spent more than US$200,000 buying and clearing 50 hectares of land in Anlong Veng, but had garnered no support. He said the museum would cost $1 million to complete.

The announcement follows his April offer to sell what he said were Pol Pot's sandals and his cameras for US$500,000. But early interest faded after provincial officials reacted negatively.

Oddar Meanchey provincial Governor Pich Sokhin declined Sunday to comment on the revised offer, but added that he also had no objection to the museum being built.

But S-21 survivor Chhum Mey said people who might consider buying the items should instead give that money to the cash-strapped Khmer Rouge tribunal.

Nhem En intends to become a millionaire: More Pol Pot's memorabilia put on sale ... including Pol Pot's toilet

Khmer Rouge photographer wants to sell Pol Pot's sandals, toilet

Mon, 18 May 2009
DPA

Phnom Penh - A former Khmer Rouge official photographer has put on sale for 1.5 million dollars what he claims to be Pol Pot's clothes, sandals and toilet, along with thousands of photographs and other artifacts he collected during the genocidal regime's 1975-79 rule. "I will sell Pol Pot's sandals, toilet, his uniform and cap, thousands of photographs and the two cameras I used during the Khmer Rouge period," said Nhem En, who was recruited to take photographs of detainees when they arrived at Tuol Sleng torture prison in Phnom Penh.

"I am asking for 1.5 million dollars, but the price is negotiable," he added.

Nhem En said he would use the money to establish a Khmer Rouge museum in Anlong Veng, a small town near the Thai border where the Maoist group hid in a jungle fortress until it disbanded in 1998.

"I am selling these items, but I have others that will be housed in the museum," he said. "I have already asked for donations for this museum from the US, France, Germany, Canada, Australia, Vietnam, South Korea and Thailand, but none have provided funding."

His appeal came as the trial of the former head of Tuol Sleng prison resumed before Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes tribunal.

Kaing Guek Euv, known by his revolutionary alias Duch, faces charges of crimes against humanity, torture, premeditated murder and breaches of the Geneva Conventions, allegedly committed at the school-turned-prison, where at least 15,000 men, women and children were imprisoned and tortured before being murdered in the "killing fields" on the outskirts of the capital.

Nhem En said the millions of dollars in international donor funding spent on bringing Duch and four other Khmer Rouge leaders to trial would be better invested in his museum.

"Nobody in the Cambodian government supports my museum plan, so it will need a great deal of international funding to be established," he said.

In April, Nhem En offered to sell Pol Pot's shoes and toilet for 500,000 dollars and said he would keep the other items to be housed in the museum.

Up to 2 million people died during through execution, starvation or overwork during the Khmer Rouge's rule.

Pol Pot's shoes, S-21 cameras up for sale

Monday, 20 April 2009
Written by Sam Rith
The Phnom Penh Post

FORMER Tuol Sleng prison photographer Nhem En has made an open call for offers on two of his cameras and a pair of Pol Pot's shoes to fund a museum in his hometown, the former communist stronghold Anlong Veng.

"I would like to call on both national and international, private and state companies to start bidding on a pair of Pol Pot's shoes and two cameras for the [starting] price of US$500,000," Nhem En, now deputy governor of Anlong Veng district, Oddar Meanchey province, said Sunday.

He said he used the cameras, one German and one Chinese, to photograph prisoners at Tuol Sleng before their death, which are now viewed by tourists visiting the genocide museum. He added that the cameras shot about 80 percent of S-21's pictures, which is why he set the starting price so high.

"Right now, I do not have enough money to continue setting up my museum. That's why I decided to offer a pair of Pol Pot's shoes and two cameras for auction," he said.

Nhem En said he will hold a news conference soon to announce details of the sale.

The ex-cadre has struggled to finance his museum despite numerous calls for donations. So far, he says, he has spent about $200,000 on buying and clearing some 50 hectares of land.

Nhem En says the museum, if it's built, will showcase items and photos from the Khmer Rouge era, including a walking stick owned by deceased former leader Ta Mok.

Auctioning history

Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, said it was Nhem En's individual right to sell the items, as they were his own private property. However, he questioned the merit of having the items in the private sphere, as opposed to in a museum.

"It does not matter [if Nhem En sells the items], but I think it would be better to keep the cameras and the shoes in a museum to show the younger generation," he said. "If Tuol Sleng museum is able, it should request to keep the items there. Once things are put on auction, you do not know where they will end up."

Him Chhem, minister of culture and fine arts, said he had not yet been informed about the sale but said he would find out whether the items were the rightful property of Nhem En.

Pol Pot's shoes up for sale [-Nhem En tries to cash in on Khmer tragedy?]

Nhem En

April 20, 2009
AFP

PHNOM PENH - A PHOTOGRAPHER for the Khmer Rouge said on Monday he is putting leader Pol Pot's sandals up for auction along with a pair of cameras used to picture life under his brutal regime.

Nhem En, who photographed inmates at the notorious S-21 torture centre and also snapped pictures at official ceremonies for the Cambodian regime, told AFP bidding for the items would open at US$500,000 (S$750,000)

'Now I offer for auction a pair of Pol Pot's sandals and my two cameras that I used to shoot Pol Pot and other Khmer Rouge leaders, as well as those who died and were victimised at S-21,' Nhem En said.

The sandals belonging to Pol Pot, who died in 1998, were made of car tyre, while the two cameras were manufactured in Germany and Japan, he added.

Nhem En, now a deputy governor of northwest Anlong Veng district, said he hoped to use the money to construct a museum to showcase photographs and items from the Khmer Rouge period, including Pol Pot's old toilet.

'I call for an auction of the items because I need the money to build a big museum in Anlong Veng,' he said.

Up to two million people died of starvation, execution, overwork or torture as the Khmer Rouge, which ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, dismantled society in a bid to forge a communist utopia.

The former chief of S-21 prison, Kaing Guek Eav - better known as Duch - is currently on trial for crimes committed during the regime. Cambodia's UN-backed court also plans to try four other senior Khmer Rouge leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

A photographer with no soul

Nhem En showing his photo album (Photo: AP)

Berkeley's Steven Okazaki was nominated for an Oscar. (Liz Hafalia / sfc)

Friday, February 13, 2009
Hugh Hart
Excerpt from the San Francisco Chronicle

On Tuesday, a U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal begins prosecuting five leaders of Cambodia's notorious Khmer Rouge regime. Better late than never, as far as Berkeley filmmaker Steven Okazaki is concerned. His Oscar-nominated short documentary, "The Conscience of Nhem En," takes viewers inside the walls of Tuol Sleng Prison. An estimated 17,000 Cambodian citizens entered the former school between 1975 and 1979. Eight lived to tell the tale. The rest were photographed, then executed.

"I've dug pretty deep into misery before, but 'The Conscience of Nhem En' is really the most difficult documentary I've ever made," Okazaki says.

He pitched HBO Documentary Films on the subject after reading about prison photographer Nhem En in 2007. When he was 16 years old, En took pictures of 6,000 prisoners shortly before their deaths.

"He came out of the woodwork because he thought he could make some money and wanted attention, I guess," Okazaki says.

Last year, Okazaki spent 2 1/2 weeks in Cambodia and questioned Nhem En on camera.

"I asked him numerous times, 'Did you ever just give these people a sympathetic look as if to say, "I'm sorry," and he said, 'Absolutely not. Why should I?' I found that disturbing. He appears to be a friendly, gentlemanly guy, but that's just on the surface. Underneath, he's a soulless, cold person."

Closely monitored by government security operatives, Okazaki managed to elicit frank accounts of incarceration from three survivors.

"Meeting these remarkable people became the great experience of making this film," Okazaki says. "They are all very emotionally scarred, but each of them has a certain spirit, and they were just lucky. One of the guys talks about being tortured for two weeks until someone came around asking, 'Does anyone know how to fix sewing machines?' He said, 'I do, I do!' That's how he got to live."

Okazaki is no stranger to bleak subject matter. He's made documentaries about teen drug addicts ("Black Tar Heroin"), Japanese American internment camps (the 1991 Oscar-winner "Days of Waiting") and nuclear devastation ("The Mushroom Club," nominated in 2006).

But "Conscience" took an unprecedented emotional toll during postproduction, he says.

"I'd blank out throughout the process of cutting the film and not know it; people would say to me, 'What happened? You just stopped talking for 10 seconds.' I found myself weeping at odd moments. I had diagnosable second-degree post-traumatic stress."

Next up for Okazaki: a documentary about Seattle street kids who have been thrown out of their homes by their parents. The filmmaker half jokes that he also hankers to make a movie with no redeeming social value whatsoever.

"I'm trying as hard as I can to do something totally irrelevant and stupid, so I've approached the producers of 'The Simpsons' about doing the life story of Homer Simpson."

'THE CONSCIENCE OF NHEM EN'

Nhem En

Bou Meng, a former prisoner of S-21

October 1, 2008
Marc Loftus
mloftus@postmagazine.com
Post Magazine (USA)

LOS ANGELES — Academy Award-winning filmmaker Steven Okazaki (Days of Waiting,1990) spent much of January in Cambodia, producing his latest documentary, The Conscience of Nhem En. The hour-long program, which will air on HBO in 2009, takes an intimate look at the country 30 years after the end of the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror.

From 1975-1979, the Khmer Rouge rounded up men, women and children, and sent them to a school in Phnom Penh, which had been converted into a prison. The prisoners were registered and photographed, and were then tortured or immediately killed. Of the 17,000 who entered the S-21 facility, only eight are known to have survived. In this documentary, three tell their stories, as does Nhem En, a 16-year-old at the time, who photographed thousands of prisoners before they were executed. His testimony lacks regret or sympathy.

“The interesting thing for me was the photographer,” says Okazaki of Nhem En. “He was a Khmer Rouge soldier, who was trained in lighting and photography, but he is not a traditional sort of character to build a movie around. He was 16 years old and he is kind of a cold, cold person. It became sort of the challenge of this film: to build it around someone who actually is not admirable.”

PRODUCTION & POST

Okazaki traveled to Cambodia to conduct research for the film and was surprised to find so many of the interview subjects available. He decided to begin production immediately. Outfitted with just a single Sony HVR HDV camera, and assisted by an associate producer, he spent 17 days shooting interviews and capturing stills of the surviving prisoner photos. Many were intentionally destroyed by fire once the Khmer Rouge’s reign came to an end.

“When the Vietnamese came in, I think they immediately realized the importance of them and preserved them, and decided that the prison would become a museum,” says Okazaki. “There is an exhibit there and they’ve mounted the photographs, sort of haphazardly. And sometimes you don’t know what it is that you are looking at.

“The interesting thing about the photographs is, they could have just done bad mug shots. But for some strange reason, they used a large format camera and lighting, and did these quite beautiful portraits of the people before they were killed. Some of the people clearly know that they are about to die, but some people look strangely oblivious to what is going on.”

Okazaki, who has a film background, says he transitioned directly to digital video, having never worked with analog formats. He’ll often work with editors on his projects, but in this case, decided to cut the film himself, working on a PC-based Avid Media Composer.

“I like the Sony Mini HDV cameras a lot and wanted to try it,” notes the filmmaker. “We’ve had some difficulty with the Avid and working with the footage — as opposed to Final Cut Pro. It’s been a bit of a struggle on this project, bringing it into it and spitting it out. We just did the final cut and are starting the sound cutting, and finishing everything up, hopefully, in the next couple of weeks.”
Okazaki is also serving as narrator for the film. “I prefer not to do it,” he says of the role, “but it just seemed that the filmmaker’s point of view really helped the film a lot in terms of what you were seeing.”

His LA office is in the same building as Fantasy Studios, so he often booked sessions to record wild narration, knowing what he was cutting upstairs. “I am not a professional narrator and had to go in there constantly, so it was great to just go down two floors and cut narration and try different things.”

At press time, Fantasy Studios (www.fantasystudios.com) engineer Jesse Nichols had worked with Okazaki nearly a dozen times, recording VO for the film. Nichols has been at Fantasy for seven years.

For The Conscience of Nhem En, Nichols and Okazaki worked in whatever room was available. Nichols would build an isolation booth, laying down carpet and configuring three gobos in a triangular fashion. He used a Neumann TLM103 for VO, noting that is has similar characteristics to the popular U87, but in a smaller package, allowing for better placement. Recording was done to a Mac-based Digidesign Pro Tools system.

“I only filter a little low end to take the room out,” says Nichols, who rolls off 70Hz and below. The pre-amp is up loud, he notes, and he’ll add a limiter on the input, just in case of spikes during the reading. Okazaki reads without picture and “his deadpan delivery” works very well, Nichols notes. He’ll give Okazaki a CD with 16-bit/48kHz WAV files for his Avid edit.

Okazaki has worked with HBO Documentaries for about 12 years and describes the relationship as “a dream situation for a filmmaker,” in part because of its flexible deadlines. “I’ll ask, ‘When do you want the film?’ And they’ll say, ‘When it’s the film you want it to be,’” says Okazaki. “The creative group there is really wonderful.”

S21 photographer first Khmer Rouge witness

01/11/2007
By Thomas Bell in Phnom Penh
The Daily Telegraph (UK)

When the Khmer Rouge's victims arrived at the S-21 torture camp in Phnom Penh, the first face they saw after the blindfold was removed belonged to Nhem En.

He was the official photographer.

The men, women and children in the notorious black and white images who appear to be staring death in the face were mostly looking at him.

Today he appeared as the first witness before Cambodia's genocide tribunal as prosecutors make their case against the prison's commandant Kaing Geuk Eav, better known as Duch, for crimes against humanity.

"It's hard to say if they knew they would die or not," he told The Daily Telegraph before giving his testimony in camera.

After months of torture, death awaited every prisoner. Over 14,000 people were sent to S-21 but only half a dozen survived.

"I realised that many times they arrested people who had done nothing," he said. "People from my village confessed to being in the CIA.

"In the end, everyone confessed to something.

"Most people went on to name every person they could think of as an accomplice before they were killed with an iron bar.

"Conversation with the prisoners was discouraged.

"Sometimes they would say, 'why have they arrested me?' and I would say, 'I don't know. My only job is to take your photo'.

"It was a job," he said, "and if you did it wrong you were dead for sure.

"You knew that. I was responsible for taking care of my own head. I took care of it."

The teenage photographer was also responsible for developing and printing the images.

"I did it all," he said with a glimmer of pride. "It was tough work."

After seizing the capital and declaring "year zero" in 1975, the Maoist Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia for three years, eight months and 20 days before the regime collapsed under the weight of its own insanity and in the face of a Vietnamese invasion.

During that period at least 1.7 million people, over one fifth of the population, were executed or died of torture, starvation and overwork.

After losing power, party workers retreated into Cambodia's jungles to wage a guerrilla war.

Nhem En, 47, finally left the Khmer Rouge in 1995 under a government amnesty.

Today he is a deputy district governor for the ruling party.

He has gold teeth, a gold watch and a chunky gold ring and he discusses his old job without shame or remorse.

"Of course I felt sad for them, but there was nothing I could do," he said of the victims he catalogued.

"As a Buddhist person of course I feel for others." But he does not believe he has bad karma.

"You do good things, you receive good things," he said. "I've become a district governor. I didn't bribe anyone.

"I love my country and I did the job for my country.

"Calling me an artist is kind of correct. As a photographer you try to make it look good," he said, before complaining: "My photos are famous around the world but no-one ever thinks of my copyrights."

He is also angry at the money offered to him by the court to cover his travel expenses.

"I'm living history," he insisted. "They should give me more. The court only offered me $5 and I don't need that money. I'm a deputy governor!

"I did my job and I have my pride. Why do they offer me $5? It's not enough for my breakfast!"

Witness to Khmer Rouge brutality to testify at trial

Nhem En, right, former chief photographer at a torture center run by Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, poses for photograph with two Buddhist monks at Tuol Sleng genocide museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. (Heng Sinith/The Associated Press)

Friday, October 26, 2007
By Seth Mydans
Posted by The International Herald Tribune

PHNOM PENH: He had a job to do and he did it supremely well, under threat of death, within earshot of screams of torture: methodically photographing Khmer Rouge prisoners and producing a haunting collection of mug shots that has become the visual symbol of Cambodia's mass killings.

"I'm just a photographer; I don't know anything," he said he told the newly arrived prisoners as he removed their blindfolds and adjusted the angles of their heads. But he knew, as they did not, that every one of them would be killed.

"I had my job, and I had to take care of my job," he said in a recent interview. "Each of us had our own responsibilities. I wasn't allowed to speak with prisoners."

That was three decades ago, when the photographer, Nhem En, now 47, was on the staff of Tuol Sleng prison, the most notorious torture house of the Khmer Rouge regime, which caused the deaths of 1.7 million people from 1975 to 1979.

This week he was called to be a witness at an upcoming trial of Khmer Rouge leaders, one of whom was his commandant at the prison, Kaing Geuk Eav, known as Duch, who has been arrested and charged with crimes against humanity.

The trial is months away, but prosecutors are interviewing witnesses, reviewing tens of thousands of pages of documents and making arrests.

As a lower-ranking cadre, Nhem En is not in jeopardy of arrest. But he is in a position to offer some of the most personal testimony at the trial, about the man he worked under for three years.

In the interview, Nhem En spoke with pride of living up to the exacting standards of a boss who was a master of negative reinforcement.

"It was really hard, my job," he said. "I had to clean, develop and dry the pictures on my own and take them to Duch by my own hand. I couldn't make a mistake. If one of the pictures was lost I would be killed."

But he said: "Duch liked me because I'm clean and I'm organized. He gave me a Rolex watch."

Fleeing with other Khmer Rouge cadre when the regime was ousted by a Vietnamese invasion in 1979, Nhem En said he traded that watch for 20 tins of milled rice.

Since then he has adapted and prospered and is now a deputy mayor of the former Khmer Rouge stronghold Anlong Veng. He has switched from an opposition party to the party of Prime Minister Hun Sen and today he wears a wristwatch that bears twin portraits of the prime minister and his wife, Bun Rany.

Last month an international tribunal arrested and charged a second Khmer Rouge figure, who is now being held side by side with Duch in a detention center. He is Nuon Chea, 82, the movement's chief ideologue and a right-hand man to the Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, who died in 1998.

Three more leaders were expected to be arrested in the coming weeks: the urbane former Khmer Rouge head of state, Khieu Samphan, along with the former foreign minister, Ieng Sary, and his wife and fellow central committee member, Ieng Thirith.

All will benefit from the caprice of Nuon Chea, who complained that the squat toilet in his cell was hurting his ailing knees and was given a proper sit-down toilet in its place.

Similar toilets are being installed in the other cells, said a tribunal spokesman, Reach Sambath, "So they will all enjoy high-standard toilets when they come."

It is not clear whether any of the cases will be combined. But even if the defendants do not see each other, their testimony, harmonious or discordant, will put on display the relationships of some of the people who once ran the country's killing machine.

Already in a 1999 interview, Duch implicated his fellow prisoner, Nuon Chea, in the killings, citing among other things a directive that said: "Kill them all."

Nhem En's career in the Khmer Rouge began in 1970 at the age of 9 when he was recruited as a village boy to be a drummer in a touring revolutionary band. When he was 16, he said, he was sent to China for a seven-month course in photography.

He became the chief of six photographers at Tuol Sleng, where at least 14,000 people were tortured to death or sent to killing fields. Only a half dozen inmates were known to have survived.

He was a craftsman and some of his portraits, carefully posed and lighted, have found their way into art galleries in the United States.

Hundreds of them hang in rows on the walls of Tuol Sleng, which is now a museum, the faces frightened, bewildered, but mostly blank and enigmatic. They are staring at Nhem En.

The job was a daily grind, he said: up at 6:30 a.m., a quick communal meal of bread or rice and something sweet, and at his post by 7 a.m. to wait for prisoners to arrive. His telephone would ring to announce them: sometimes one, sometimes a group, sometimes truckloads of them, he said.

"They came in blindfolded and I had to untie the cloth," he said.

"I was alone in the room, so I am the one they saw. They would say, 'Why was I brought here? What am I accused of? What did I do wrong?' "

But Nhem En ignored them.

" 'Look straight ahead. Don't lean your head to the left or the right.' That's all I said," he recalled. "I had to say that so the picture would turn out well. Then they were taken to the interrogation center. The duty of the photographer was just to take the picture."

Ex-Tuol Sleng Photographer Summoned

Sok Khemara, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
23 October 2007

The Khmer Rouge tribunal has summoned as a witness Tuol Sleng photographer Nhem En, to appear before investigating judges.

Nhem En said Tuesday he had received a summons earlier this month, requesting him at the courts Nov. 1. He will be the highest-profile witness so far to undergo questioning by tribunal judges.

"I got the letter of invitation of Oct. 17, and they asked me to go on Nov. 1," Nhem En said. "I will go to see the court and testify, without fear" of being prosecuted.

His summons is likely for the case against Kaing Khek Iev, alias Duch, the former director of Tuol Sleng, where up to 16,000 Cambodians were executed and dumped into mass graves outside the capital.

Held by military courts since 1999, Duch was turned over to the tribunal in July. A hearing to decide whether he will be released ahead of trial will be held Nov. 15, tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath said.

Nhem En, the former S-21 photographer

Nhem En, 47, former chief photographer at a torture center run by Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, poses for photo with dozens photographs of former prisoners in a room of Tuol Sleng genocide museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Jan. 25, 2007. Nhem En said Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2007, he has been summoned to testify as a witness before the U.N.-supported Cambodian genocide tribunal. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Nhem En, 47, former chief photographer at a torture center run by Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, looks at his pictures document at the Documentation Center of Cambodia office in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Jan. 23, 2007. Nhem En said Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2007, he has been summoned to testify as a witness before the U.N.-supported Cambodian genocide tribunal. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Nhem En, 47, right, former chief photographer at a torture center run by Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, poses for photograph with two Buddhist monks at Tuol Sleng genocide museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Jan. 23, 2007. Nhem En said Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2007 he has been summoned to testify as a witness before the U.N.-supported Cambodian genocide tribunal. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Cambodian tribunal summons former Khmer Rouge prison photographer

Tuesday, October 23, 2007
The Associated Press

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: Cambodia's genocide tribunal has summoned a former photographer who captured thousands of haunting images of prisoners before they were tortured and executed by the Khmer Rouge, the photographer said Tuesday.

Nhem En, 47, said the tribunal's judges ordered him to appear before them on Nov. 1 "in regard to the criminal case of Duch," referring to his former boss, Kaing Guek Eav, who headed the Khmer Rouge's notorious S-21 prison and torture center.

Duch has been detained by the U.N.-backed tribunal on charges of crimes against humanity committed when the Khmer Rouge regime held power in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979.

The group's radical policies caused the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people from starvation, overwork, disease and execution.

Up to 16,000 suspected enemies of the regime were tortured at the prison before being executed in an area near the capital, Phnom Penh that later became known as the killing fields.

Only about a dozen of the prisoners are thought to have survived. The prison is now known as the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and is frequented by tourists.

Nhem En photographed thousands of prisoners before they were locked up, tortured and executed and their images are the centerpiece of the museum.

He has denied any involvement in the atrocities and said his job was merely taking pictures of the prisoners after they were brought to the prison.

"I will not oppose the summons. I support the tribunal to try the former Khmer Rouge leaders," Nhem En said.

KRT summons S-21 Photographer to act as a witness

Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Everyday.com.kh
Translated from Khmer by Socheata

The KR Tribunal (KRT) has summoned the former photographer of the Tuol Sleng (S-21) prison to come to the tribunal to provide clarification on 01 November, so that the tribunal can gather information about the torture performed at the Tuol Sleng prison. RFA reported that Nhem En, the former photographer of the Tuol Sleng prison who currently lives in Anlong Veng, Oddar Meanchey province, recently received a copy of the summon from the KRT investigating judge for the 01 November clarification. Nhem En learnt to become a photographer in China, and he started taking pictures at the Tuol Sleng prison since 1976. He took pictures of prisoners brought in by the Khmer rouge for torturing at the Tuol Sleng prison before they were later killed.

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.