The Master of Confessions

by Thierry Cruvellier

“I can’t remember. ‘Chan’ was my name, of course. Yet as hard as I try, I can’t remember.”

  THERE IS A WELL-KNOWN PHOTO taken during the S-21 years: four men, including Duch and Mam Nai, stand behind their respective wives and children. Obviously, Mam Nai is obliged to admit to the court that he recognizes his former boss in the photo. But he has the nerve to say that he doesn’t recognize the other two men. When the court shows him documents proving that he had interrogated a Western prisoner, Mam Nai asserts his right to silence. Mam Nai isn’t on trial, and never will be, so he can afford to say nothing. He makes the most of the blessing of amnesia. All he has to do is get through an unpleasant forty-eight hours, the only time in his life when he will be the object of public scorn. He rubs a little Tiger Balm into his neck and behind his ears, cleans his spectacles with his krama, and weathers the storm.

  Someone asks if he has any regrets. “My regret is that the country was invaded. First the United States invaded us, then the Vietnamese. That’s what I regret.”

  When court officials were reconstructing events at S-21 during the trial’s investigative phase, Mam Nai would show up wearing a funny-looking beanie. It had three stripes: one purple, one red, and one orange, and the strangely provocative words—NO FEAR—written across its front. He claimed not to know what they meant.

  Nothing is more chilling than a Communist intellectual. Because an intellectual is, by definition, a member of the bourgeoisie, he must persuade others of his proletarian transformation.

  “Every Party member who was not from the peasant class and with no connection to someone powerful had to work relentlessly to meet the eligibility criteria,” explains Duch.

  The intellectual who feels obliged to apologize for his pedigree compensates by adopting even more radical ideas. Mam Nai believes his own metamorphosis was successful. “I was a teacher, I was from the bourgeoisie, but I adapted myself to the proletariat. I succeeded. That’s why the Party accepted me as a member.”

  “I have no further questions for the accused . . . I mean, for the witness, Mr. President,” says Judge Lavergne, making a slip that gives some relief to the bitter indignation simmering deep in the hearts of everyone in the public gallery.

  FROM THE END OF 1977, the armed conflict between the Khmer and Vietnamese Communists escalated, and many more Vietnamese prisoners started arriving at S-21. According to the available archives, 345 Vietnamese soldiers, spies, and ordinary citizens were interrogated and then eliminated at S-21. In the propaganda it broadcast via its radio station, the Khmer Rouge called on Cambodians to kill every Vietnamese they found. In 1978, the Khmer Rouge made films of those Vietnamese it had captured and sent to S-21.

  “If we wanted them to say that in Vietnam people were dying of hunger, then they said it. Their confessions matched what we wanted to hear,” says Duch.

  Duch struggles to hide the visceral dislike he and a considerable number of his countrymen harbor toward the Yuon, a pejorative term for the Vietnamese. He makes a point of telling the court that he doesn’t use that word derisively, but he stiffens when a specialist of the region describes the two age-old neighbors as “brother enemies.”

  “Did you hate the Vietnamese troops?” asks a judge.

  “That was my feeling at the time. It’s an old story, a long-standing quarrel.”

  Whenever Mam Nai talks about the Yuon he so loathes, his tone hardens noticeably. Mam Nai believes that the Revolution failed both because it was infiltrated by the enemy and because of the Vietnamese invaders. His language skills earned him the responsibility of overseeing the interrogation of Vietnamese prisoners, which took place in a house east of the prison, near a sewage canal.

  “Did you believe their confessions?” asks Judge Cartwright.

  “I think the soldiers made true confessions, because they were attacking us.”

  The judge pulls out a confession by one of those enemy soldiers. On December 14, 1978, the soldier “confessed” that the Vietnamese army was in complete disarray, that it would never have the courage to take on the glorious forces of Democratic Kampuchea, and that it was on the run from the Khmer Rouge. Three weeks later, Vietnamese troops took Phnom Penh.

  “Did you believe this?”

  What he said had nothing to do with the Yuon army. He was talking about one small unit. In general, I don’t think it was true. Concerning the Cambodian prisoners, I don’t think 100 percent of them were enemies. Nor do I believe that 100 percent of them were innocent. To some degree, some committed offenses. As for the Vietnamese, I firmly believe that they were the invaders of Democratic Kampuchea. None of them were innocent.

  THE KHMER ROUGE CALLED the Vietnamese “territory-eaters.” In his S-21 diary, Mam Nai wrote: “We must make war today. And we must make war tomorrow. We must make permanent war. Will the Vietnamese succeed in eating us? That’s up to us. If we can defend our country, we will be famous throughout the universe.”

  In Cambodian politics, it is always easy to hate the Vietnamese. Nowadays as much as in the past, Cambodian politicians need only raise the specter of the Vietnamese invader to win an argument, position themselves as patriots, or acquire some legitimacy. In 1970, the far right, led by General Lon Nol, justified its putsch by positioning it within the context of the national struggle against the “hereditary Vietnamese enemy.” Later, largely to distract people from its own colossal economic failure and rule of terror, the Khmer Rouge was quick to assert that it was defending the nation from an aggressive neighbor. The party in power today got there on the backs of Vietnamese tanks, so it avoids that stance. The opposition, however, regularly turns to populist xenophobia to justify its own existence.

  Despite their crimes, the Khmer Rouge are commonly described as “good nationalists.” Far-right nationalism is toxic, whereas the far-left variety is honorable. The Khmer Rouge annihilated a quarter of the population of Cambodia, yet people say without batting an eye that the regime was devoted to its country. The Khmer Rouge loved Cambodia to death. Nate Thayer, the journalist who accompanied Nic Dunlop on his search for Duch, wrote of Pol Pot: “I think he was a true nationalist as well as a truly evil man.” But is this a paradox or a combination of two evils?

  A French journalist specializing in Southeast Asia wrote that nationalism is a way to fill the void created when Marxism meets reality. Prior to their victory, the Khmer Rouge leaders proclaimed that one had to choose between the individual and the Party, and that they had chosen the Party. Forty years later, in an interview he gave shortly before his arrest, Brother Number Two explained that one now had to choose between the nation and the individual, and that he had chosen the nation. At least he showed consistency in choosing the worse of the two.

  CHAPTER 29

  THE GHOST OF PHUNG TON HAS BEEN HAUNTING THE TRIAL from the start. Phung Ton, a law professor and dean at the University of Phnom Penh, is still remembered with great respect in Cambodia’s academic circles. An important figure of Cambodia’s liberal left, the professor was an expert in international and maritime law and was known for his progressive ideas and for leading a self-disciplined life in the service of knowledge and research. In 1968, the same year Duch was imprisoned for having links with the clandestine Communist Party, Sihanouk’s secret police arrested Professor Phung Ton, held him for a month, and then placed him under temporary surveillance.

  The professor had more luck when the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh in April 1975: he had left Cambodia under attack the previous month to attend a conference in Switzerland. He missed the brutal exodus from the city out to the co-ops, the forced labor in the rice paddies and on the canals and dykes; he escaped the tyranny of the young guards dressed in black and the ignominy of being “reeducated.” But his wife and seven children were left behind in Cambodia. Time passed; Phung Ton had no news of them; the separation became intolerable. In a letter to a friend, a professor in France, where Phung Ton had taken refuge, he wrote:

  I have a large family and cannot just abandon them to thei
r fate. Let the new leaders in power put me in prison or kill me; no matter, so long as I see my wife and children again.

  On December 23, 1975, he announced that he was flying back to Phnom Penh via Beijing:

  I don’t know what to expect back home, but I want to go back if only to be reunited with my family, from whom I’ve had no news in nine months.

  On Christmas day, Phung Ton—along with a number of other Cambodian intellectuals, including Chao Seng, another renowned professor—landed in Phnom Penh. They had barely set foot on the ground when they were taken off to different camps. One year later, on December 12, 1976, Phung Ton was transferred to the prison from which there was no return: S-21. In the photo taken of him upon his arrival, he has the number 17 hanging around his neck like some kind of poacher’s snare. He’s wearing a shirt with thin stripes. He must have been the seventeenth person to have been registered at S-21 that month.

  “My father looks unrecognizable and emaciated. His eyes are empty,” says his daughter, showing the court the photo, the last visual trace of her father’s existence.

  It’s estimated that a prisoner at S-21 lasted two months on average before being executed. The professor was held in his cell for at least seven. On July 6, 1977, a medical examination sheet, or at least what passed for one, recorded that Phung Ton was unresponsive, that he was suffering from diarrhea and renal failure, and that he was underweight. After that, his name disappears from the archives. His family believes that he died the day after the medical report was made. There’s no record of his interrogations during the preceding months. A mere four sheets of paper concerning him have been found in the center’s archives, constituting the first draft of a “biography.” Those pages were written by Mam Nai.

  DUCH’S PROBLEM ISN’T REPUDIATING the Party or Communism, or expressing regret for the purges or the merciless discipline, or reconciling with the three survivors of S-21. His problem is getting over his betrayal. Professor Phung Ton is one of a handful of individuals (Professor Chao Seng is another) whose executions at S-21 Duch finds especially troubling. The man has grown an impenetrable plate of armor against human emotion, yet the mere mention of Phung Ton’s name can pierce it in a fraction of a second. To purge members of the army or members of the Party in the name of discipline or loyalty is one thing; but how does one justify the murder of a much-admired and harmless university professor, one who had the courage of his progressive convictions and whose only sin was to come home to his family? Duch struggles with it, even in the context of class warfare. The wound left by the murder of Phung Ton was opened at the very start of the trial and hasn’t stopped bleeding, to the point that the professor seems to have become the victim around which Duch’s fate is to be symbolically decided. Phung Ton represents everything we demand to know about this period, and on which hangs the possibility for the families to forgive Duch, as well as his impossible redemption. The professor’s fate was the result not of violent, fratricidal purges but of a murderous ideology. That his daughter and widow show up in court every day without fail turns his fate into an emblem of Cambodia’s tragic past.

  IT’S JUNE 16, 2009. The trial has been going for two and a half months. Duch has spent many intense hours on the stand, testifying about the years before S-21, about Communist Party policies, about the establishment of the prison. Always self-possessed, and often in control of proceedings, Duch shows remarkable fortitude up until the morning when the court discusses the fate of Professor Phung Ton.

  Duch starts to sob, the emotion twisting the features of his face. He tries to fight it, tries to fend off these waves of emotion that he usually keeps at bay, but they assail him like seawater pounding a sandstone cliff. Only when the presiding judge asks a series of confused and disjointed questions does Duch get some breathing space. Roux is on the edge of his seat. He doesn’t take his eyes off of his anguished client.

  “We—and this is particularly true in Western thinking—we expect those who have committed crimes against humanity to manifest some kind of culpability,” says the psychologist. “There are various ways it can express itself: as a very serious depression, for example, or suicidal tendencies, or tears. Many show no guilt. But for those that do, this is how it comes out.”

  All the civil parties have left the courtroom. Duch tries to keep his answers to the bare minimum: “That’s wrong,” “That’s not true.” He knows that only by economizing his words can he stop himself from falling into the abyss of emotion that he has so carefully kept at bay for four decades. His voice has changed and he sounds slightly hoarse. The man who could modulate his voice at will now has trouble speaking. The man who dominated proceedings, who controlled, accepted, or rejected such and such an argument with irritating but masterful authority is now struggling to prevent his chest from being ripped open. His lawyer, Maître Roux, keeps his eyes fixed on his client. The lawyer remains perfectly still, his hands joined together under his chin and half-covering his mouth, as tense as a lookout atop a mast. He looks as though he’s projecting all his energy toward his wretched client. The questions no longer matter; the facts, the details about the torture, all that has become background noise. Duch is drowning.

  But he makes it through.

  It takes him forty minutes to regain his composure, and even then, he’s still fragile. In the afternoon, the court raises the issue of the medical experiments carried out at S-21. Duch’s subordinates, Suor Thi and Prak Khan, talked about them in court. There are mentions of them in the archives. Yet Duch disputes at least some of the facts. Presiding Judge Nil Nonn asks the defendant if he was aware of these experiments.

  “Yes, I was,” says Duch, his voice calm.

  Living prisoners were used for surgical training. Blood was taken from prisoners. My position regarding these blood transfusions has changed. During the preliminary inquiry, I said that the transfusions were a vestige of Nath’s time, and that I didn’t know about them. But I gave it some thought and remembered receiving a phone call from one of my superiors, who told me that the blood transfusions were causing skin irritations to combatants. This is another criminal act I committed.

  Duch has composed himself, but his conscience gives up some ground. A hundred detainees died drained of their blood, he says. The practice only ended after the medical staff was purged; that is, when the only people competent to carry out this lethal bloodletting were killed themselves. No one had been trained to replace them.

  Pharmaceutical drugs were also tested on the prisoners. Duch maintains that the prisoners were aware that they were participating in an experiment. He admits to having been personally involved. But then he tells a preposterous story: he claims to have secretly opened dozens of capsules containing the test medicine, thrown it out, cleaned the capsules with cotton buds and replaced their contents with acetaminophen, thus saving his human guinea pigs from death, he recounts to an incredulous and repulsed audience.

  “ACCEPTANCE IS A PROCESS,”says the psychologist in court.

  The defendant goes through different phases. First, there might be outright denial, a willful refusal to accept something. Next, there might be some refutation, by which I mean the subject accepts some assertions and rejects others. That leads the subject toward self-deprecation—in this case very quickly, as we’ve seen. Duch immediately incriminated himself: “I am a criminal, I feel guilty, what can I do?” I believe this could well be another way of not accepting, of being unable to fully accept the facts.

  “In this process from denial to self-incrimination, can certain obstacles remain? Things that are so difficult to bear that the subject cannot bring himself to say them out loud?” asks Roux.

  Yes, that can be part of the process. The process can take a long time or just a little. It depends on the subject’s background and on the thing that might lead him to awareness and acceptance. The trial is one contributing factor. We should take into account another: the saliency of the Khmer Rouge fabrications, which are still present. From an intra-psychic pers
pective, one might imagine Duch’s conscience as a battlefield with different battalions moving across it: it is a mechanism with moving parts.

  Some parts of Duch’s conscience shifted on that day in June. His confession no longer holds water. The man seems exhausted, spent after a long, frenzied journey from confession to confession, from setback to defeat. The morning’s discussion of Professor Phung Ton left him shattered; in the afternoon, he confessed to a crime that he had never before acknowledged then talked wildly about the unlikely covert steps he took to stop the medical experiments on prisoners. His posture and his tone of voice have changed. He’d never looked as energetic and confident as he had the previous week; now his face looks haggard. “Heavy. Heavy and serious,” Roux confides to me that night.

  One name threw Duch off his game: Phung Ton. The trial’s mysterious, uncontrollable force seems to be at work.

  Yet it won’t happen again. There will be other times during the trial when Duch will be confronted by his own emotions or by the truth, but he will never again let himself fall apart the way he did today. He won’t make any further admissions; he’ll go back to being master of his own confessions.

  AGAINST ALL THE EVIDENCE, Duch denies knowing that the professor was a prisoner at S-21.

  “I respected him. Had I known he was there, I would have given him my support, even if he was supposed to be smashed, since that was the procedure. I didn’t betray the professor’s soul, and I ask for forgiveness for his soul,” he says, falling apart.

  The professor’s daughter sits ramrod-straight, a red scarf wrapped around her neck, and looks unblinkingly at Duch. Duch is adamant that Phung Ton wasn’t tortured and that he died of an illness, not a blow to the back of the head and a knife across his throat. Yet when Him Huy takes the stand, there’s a tremor in Duch’s voice as he implores his former henchman: “You know what happened to the professor. Was he executed at S-21 or at Choeung Ek? Please, be honest . . .”