Huot Chheang Kaing doesn’t testify before the tribunal. They were classmates for three years, but he hasn’t seen Kaing Guek Eav since 1961. He comes to his old school friend’s trial for one day and one day only. During a recess, he goes and sits among a few journalists in the press room. He still speaks good French, but the interview takes place mostly in Khmer. He recalls a talented child, “always top of the class,” always first in math, physics, and chemistry. Kaing is cheerful. He liked to tease his classmate about his name. He remembers another joke they shared, but it gets lost in translation—either that or it requires a certain sense of humor.
In any case, here’s the joke as it was relayed to me: “Duch used to say that drinking water before eating was good for your health. I used to say the opposite: if you drink water, you won’t eat much! So everyone takes care of his own business.”
One of the most pleasurable things about listening to stories of people from other parts of the world is when you no longer understand anything. During the first few months I spent covering the Rwandan genocide trials, a number of Rwandan witnesses used a proverb that clearly held some powerful meaning: “When a snake is wrapped around the calabash, you have to break the calabash.” I thoroughly enjoyed watching the judges’ faces as they scratched their heads and tried to make sense of this ominous adage.
Kaing wins you over by lacing his wisdom with humor. For example, he tells a highbrow pun about Communism he and his friends used to make: in Khmer, the word communism sounds a little like kum menuoh; menuoh is the collective word for man or humanity and kum means resentment. Therefore Communism, they used to joke, means “resentment against man.”
From the start, Kaing disliked Communist ideology. Not everyone believed the Revolution would deliver what it promised, he says, which doesn’t mean they were some sort of vile reactionaries. He had noticed how the Chinese were starving to death while more democratic governments provided life’s necessities. He also found that the sciences were more advanced in liberal countries. He used to argue with his classmate Kaing Guek Eav. The students were split into two tendencies—communism and liberalism, “progressives” and “imperialists.” Kaing also recounts that some French teachers had no qualms preaching their politics.
Duch was neither talkative nor funny, says Kaing. He was a very serious boy. His classmates found him a bit effeminate, but no one teased him, because he was such a good student. “After 1979, I was told that he had been the director of S-21. I didn’t believe it, because he had been so gentle. Then when I saw the documents, I believed it.”
The memory makes Kaing cry.
“It’s the fault of the Democratic Kampuchea regime,” he says, regaining his composure. Kaing evaded the men in black by hiding his education while toiling in the co-ops. He still considers Duch a friend, though he makes sure to point out that he thinks Duch deserves to be tried. When Duch catches sight of his former classmate in the public gallery, he makes his way over to the thick, soundproof glass during the recess and waves at him. He smiles, clearly delighted to see his old friend.
“When Duch approached me, I saw the same man that I knew back then. He hasn’t changed. It was the same face. What’s changed is that he used to have quite a feminine character. Now he behaves more like a Frenchman. He’s firm,” says Huot Chheang Kaing with a twinkle in his eye.
WHEN KAING GUEK EAV was admitted to the prestigious Sisowath Lycée in Phnom Penh, he became aware of the gulf between the living conditions of rural Cambodians and those of wealthy city dwellers. In 1962, at the Pedagogical Institute, he met a professor who had been educated in France and who was already a secret member of the Communist Party, Son Sen. Henceforth, Duch addressed him as “master.” At the same time, a French professor of geography was teaching Duch a few Marxist principles. They resonated strongly with the young, idealistic student eager for social change. Through another teacher from the former colonial homeland, Duch discovered Stoicism, which teaches indifference toward anything that affects emotions.
According to the psychologist expert witnesses, “Duch acquired a sense of social devaluation very early. He tried to compensate for it with study and hard work; he adopted highly idealized male role models and endlessly sought their approval. Their recognition made him feel like he had his own identity, which he based on theirs.”
That same year, 1962, the Sisowath Lycée was gripped by an intense protest movement. Sihanouk’s police reacted by brutally repressing it. Chhay Kim Huor, a teacher whom Duch admired, was among those arrested. Though Duch played no part in these events, they left him deeply shocked and fanned his revolutionary ardor. One of his teachers warned him that joining the Revolution was like being inside of a circle: once you’re in, there’s no way out. But by now his faith burned fervently, and he could not put off his decision to throw himself into the roiling waters of the Revolution much longer. He decided to join in 1964.
“A slave society becomes a feudal society, which becomes a capitalist society, which becomes a socialist society before finally becoming a communist society,” recalls Duch. “We started to appreciate this theory while studying elementary mathematics. ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his work; from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.’ I really liked that theory. I believed it. I wanted a society based on that slogan.” A society based on absolute abundance and an end to the problem of production. In essence, a utopia.
Duch completed his studies. In 1965, he became a math teacher in Skoun, less than a hundred kilometers north of Phnom Penh. He paid a visit to Sou Sath. He wanted her to join him in Skoun and teach there, too. But she didn’t follow him. Judge Lavergne and Roux share a complicit smile but keep mum about what’s behind it.
Duch gave up his math books and embraced Marxist and revolutionary literature. The first such book was an illustrated Chinese work with captioned photos. Then he bought Everything Is Done for the Party, the story of a Chinese mine worker who dedicated himself to the Revolution first in a weapons-repair factory, then in a bayonet factory, then in a heavy-weapons factory. The Chinese man was wounded in his eyes and hands and sent to the Soviet Union for treatment. When he came back, he was made professor of industrial drawing at the university. “I thought that if that was the way of the Revolution, I had to live up to it; I had to be capable of following it.”
He devoured Georges Politzer’s Elementary Principles of Philosophy—“published by Éditions Sociales,” specifies Duch—as well as Mao Zedong’s On New Democracy. He was completely fascinated by class warfare. “Every kind of thinking is stamped with the brand of a class,” he repeats to the court in French. Another idea has lingered in his memory: to truly love the people is to sacrifice oneself in order to bring about the total dictatorship of the proletariat. Duch found the alternatives lacking. For example, Jesus Christ taught that, should someone strike your right cheek, you should offer them your left. At the time, Duch found this to be at the very least inefficient, if not outright idiotic.
“I didn’t know how you could serve the people with that theory,” he says soberly.
He read Gandhi. But Gandhi seemed impossible to follow, because he was half-human, half-divine, he says. Marx, Lenin, and Mao felt much more familiar to him. He was particularly seduced by the Chinese leader. He bought Mao’s book of thoughts on conflict, Four Essays on Philosophy. He remembers several of the book’s chapters, including Where Do Correct Ideas Come From, perfectly. “At the end of his book, Mao wrote, ‘Let a thousand flowers bloom and let a hundred schools of thought mutually complement one another.’ I loved that sentence . . .”
Later, in 1976, Duch tried to study Stalin’s book on Leninism, the famous book by which young Eastern Europeans who had fallen under the Soviet yoke were supposed to learn Russian. But Duch gave up on it. Maoism, he says, remained his major intellectual influence.
CHAPTER 20
TEACHER! HELLO, TEACHER! THAT’S MY TEACHER!” The man calling out is a tall sixty-ye
ar-old who, when he arrived in the courtroom, greeted everybody with his hands pressed together and the broad, charming smile of someone who has spent his life working in the fields. Duch was his teacher between 1965 and 1968, and the man has clearly kept a happy memory of a down-to-earth, scrupulously fair, and kind teacher who gave free private lessons to poor students and who didn’t preach politics in the classroom. The man remembers hearing Duch mention communism at the end of a class, but without pushing it on anyone. “He was a good model. The students liked him. We gladly attended his classes.”
Another student of Kaing Guek Eav, who became a secondary school principal before retiring, describes the same gentle and accessible teacher.
“The way he talked to us encouraged us to be good students and to help one another. We could consult with him at any time,” he says, punctuating each sentence with an odd, quick exhalation through his nose.
Kaing Guek Eav talked with his students about morality, about loving the poor, about acquiring knowledge in order to better serve the nation. He encouraged them to work hard, and led by example. One former student after another, both in the courtroom and among the public, painted the same picture of a simple, fair, accessible man who was strict but never cruel.
Even then, Duch was secretly supporting the Revolution by giving most of his salary to the movement. Of his monthly salary of seven thousand riels, he says, he kept only a thousand for himself. He gave nothing to his parents. Everything had to be sacrificed to the Revolution. He quietly ran a clandestine network whose members included a certain In Lorn, alias Nath, who, ten years later, would become the first director of S-21.
Duch may have decided to join the Revolution in 1964, but it wasn’t until 1967 that he fully dedicated himself to it. At the beginning of that year, a peasant revolt erupted in Samlaut in the northwest of the country. The government put it down mercilessly. The far-right element then in power initiated a “hunt for Reds.” Midway through the year, Duch put himself through secret training, during which he met Vorn Vet, one of the top leaders of the Cambodian Communist movement. Vet would eventually become Duch’s direct superior in the maquis, as well as Brother Number Five or Six of the Politburo, before he, too, met his end at S-21—at Duch’s hands. Duch’s other victims at S-21 included his former teachers Chhay Kim Huor and Ke Kim Huot, as well as Nath.
By the end of 1967, it was time for Duch to bid farewell to those close to him. He visited his family and told them, a few friends and the person in charge of the pagoda, that he was going into the maquis. He paid a final visit to Sou Sath and her husband. It was October 21, 1967, he tells the court.
Kaing Guek Eav went into the forest in the Cardamom Mountains, in southwest Cambodia. On November 25, 1967, he stood before Ke Pauk and took an oath of allegiance to the Revolution and the Party. Ke Pauk later oversaw the massive purges in the north of the country that kept the S-21 killing machine running at full steam.
“Did you accept that political violence was necessary when you joined the Communist Party of Kampuchea?” asks Judge Lavergne.
“No one told me at the time that political violence was the Party’s daily bread. I only found out later, when I was forced to become the director of M-13.”
Forty years later, Duch rediscovers his fervor when he recalls taking that oath in the heart of the jungle. To demonstrate to the court the revolutionary salute, he stands sentry-straight, bends his elbow at a right angle and holds his implacably clenched fist level with his head. It is a gesture he faithfully performed daily for years and years, and it comes back to him with ease. His tightly clenched fist, his ramrod posture, and the way he holds his arm straight against the side of his body all bear witness to the burning conviction that consumed so much of his life. “Raising the fist like this signified that you mustn’t betray the cause. I didn’t betray it. I walked the straight line.”
Comrade Duch had barely started his revolutionary career when he suffered a serious setback. On January 5, 1968, twelve days before the Khmer Rouge started their armed struggle, Duch was arrested by the police force of the regime he hoped to overthrow. He was found guilty of breaching state security and of consorting with the enemy. The day of his hearing, he spoke without a lawyer. His trial lasted half a day. He was sentenced to twenty years of hard labor. Duch did not appeal; being a revolutionary demands the utmost sacrifice and radicalism. Duch was locked up in the central prison, where he got to know a number of militant members of the clandestine movement. In May 1968, he was transferred to Prey Sar prison. Eight years later, Prey Sar, by then known as S-24, came under his authority.
Duch tells the court that the authorities at Prey Sar used to terrorize the inmates. Some prisoners were summarily executed, he says, though he didn’t witness this directly. Some were tortured. Duch dryly reminds the court that prisoners were tortured under French rule, under Sihanouk’s rule, and under Lon Nol’s rule. “Therefore my experience was a combination of all these, even if I taught myself.”
Duch was insulted, but never tortured. Nonetheless, it was within the walls of Prey Sar that he came to believe that torture was “inevitable.” When a judge asks him whether such practices strike him as normal, acceptable, or outrageous, Duch stalls, unable to find an answer.
“As a revolutionary, I was prepared to submit to torture. I wasn’t frightened. I knew what was to come. I joined the revolution to change society, to transform it, to oppose the government, and to end government-sponsored torture,” he says calmly.
There’s a determined look in his eyes, though they’ve lost their usual strange gleam. Duch wants to convince the court that his spirit of sacrifice was undiminished. Then he tries to tackle the question: “If we had to judge it . . . we knew it was a crime . . . but how could we oppose it?”
The question is put to him again: “Were the torture and executions criminal acts, yes or no?”
“I was aware that they were crimes, and I knew that we had to fight for the Revolution. But I don’t want to hide behind events. You are the judge of me.”
PREY SAR UNDER SIHANOUK wasn’t like Prey Sar under Pol Pot. For one, there was a doctor in residence. For another, the food was better. Reading was allowed. Duch says that he even continued studying Mao—clear evidence of how permissive Sihanouk’s security service was. Family members were allowed to visit on Thursdays. Ultimately, you could get out alive.
On April 3, 1970, after two years and three months of incarceration, good fortune smiled on Duch. Two weeks previously, Lon Nol, Norodom Sihanouk’s army chief of staff, staged a coup while the prince was abroad. One of Lon Nol’s first actions was to announce the release of almost five hundred political prisoners. Duch had already been tried and sentenced, but a distant relative of his mother’s had ties to Lon Nol. Duch was released.
The coup of March 18, 1970, determined Duch’s fate and changed the course of Cambodian history. It amplified the terrifying bombing campaigns by the Americans. From 1969 to 1973, at least 540,000 tons of ordnance were dropped—blindly and from high altitude—on Cambodian territory. By contrast, a “mere” 160,000 tons of ordnance were dropped on Japan during World War II. The putsch gave the Khmer Rouge a huge, undreamed-of boost when Sihanouk backed the nascent guerrilla movement, essentially legitimizing it in the eyes of many Cambodians. It also tipped the country into an outright civil war in which around 600,000 people died between 1970 and 1975.
Duch explains with reasonable clarity:
Sihanouk was the head of state. He used populist politics to defend the monarchy. Lon Nol was subservient to the United States. If Nixon hadn’t recognized Lon Nol and if the Khmer Rouge hadn’t cooperated with Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge insurrection would never have succeeded. Sihanouk said that all Cambodians should go into the maquis and fight. That is how the Khmer Rouge got its support.
Duch and his cellmates Mam Nai, Hor, and Pon regained their freedom. These men, who had devoted themselves to the education of others, and who, before they embraced Leninism, had been educ
ated in the spirit of the Enlightenment, went on to become the operators of a merciless machine that ground other men into dust. Hor became the deputy director of S-21; Pon and Mam Nai, both teachers, became chief interrogators under the authority of Duch—also a teacher, and more talented than either of them. All followed orders handed down by their master, Son Sen—another teacher. No amount of education has ever inoculated a person from violent behavior, not even the most extreme variety.
After his release, Duch spent three weeks at home. Then he went to a monastery. Shortly after, he resumed his revolutionary activities. Four months later, in August of 1970, he obtained authorization to enter the “liberated zone,” the part of the country already controlled by the Khmer Rouge. Now Duch’s revolutionary life began in earnest.
“HOW DOES A PERSON become Duch?” asks the psychologist.
Life events from a person’s early childhood, education, and family aren’t enough to explain how he or she comes to commit crimes against humanity. Geopolitical clinical psychology takes into account the relationship in each of us between our personal histories and our collective ones. It takes into account the effects that political, economic, historical, and cultural factors have on the subject’s personality, alongside events in the subject’s personal life—those that occurred in early childhood and the role of the family; in this case, it also takes into account the role mentors play in Cambodian culture.
Duch told the psychologists about three events that particularly affected him; they took place during that crucial period before he went into the maquis, the period that shaped his thinking. The first is an utterly banal event of the kind found in any romance novel: a story of thwarted love. The second later triggers a flood of sarcasm among the trial’s participants and observers: toward the end of 1965, someone stole Duch’s bicycle, preventing him from getting to class at a time when teaching meant everything to him.
The Master of Confessions Page 14
