The Master of Confessions (12 page)

When the liberating forces found them in S-21, Champhal and the other children were taken to an orphanage. Champhal was then adopted by Keo Chanda, an important member of the new ruling power, which comprised Khmer Communists opposed to Pol Pot who had returned in Vietnamese tanks. By coincidence, it turned out that Keo Chanda, the minister of information and propaganda at the time, was also president of the People's Revolutionary Court, in which young Norng Champhal had testified. The little boy was introduced to Hun Sen, the young and ambitious minister of foreign affairs, who went on to become prime minister in 1985 and who has held on to the post ever since. Norng Champhal also met the real survivors of S-21, including Vann Nath. We don't really know what became of the child survivor after Keo Chanda died at the end of the 1980s. Everyone who has studied S-21 knows of his existence; some met him in the early 2000s. Yet when the ECCC was established a few years later, its investigators showed little interest in him. Indeed, it seemed as though everyone had forgotten about little Norng Champhal, whose testimony as a ten-year-old had been so sensational at the show trial of 1979.

Everywhere from Kigali to Phnom Penh, from Sarajevo to Baghdad, you will find men and women who have devoted their lives to bringing to justice those responsible for mass murders. Without their drive and commitment, they would never have the energy to carry out their work as activists, researchers, curators of memory, victim advocates and unwavering enemies of state violence. One can only admire the steadfast, single-minded, and pure-hearted toil undertaken by these enemies of impunity. And without the determination—the
absolute
faith, as Duch would put it—with which they stand guard against the rest of the world's propensity to forget, and against the impure pragmatism of the powerful, there would be no archived record of these crimes, nor any hope of retribution.

That such tribunals exist at all is thanks in part to the efforts of people who, for reasons known only to themselves, have dedicated their lives to pursuing justice. And when the trials for which they have labored in obscurity for years or even decades at last take place, these people often find themselves blinded by the glare of the media and public opinion, and unsettled by all the money that suddenly appears. It can prove to be a difficult moment. When a court is established, it is recognition of their work, but it also threatens to sideline them. For the international lawyers who swarm to the court in order to dispense justice in a matter about which they know nothing, these men and women are vital experts and mediators. The lawyers immediately reach out to them. At first, these specialists are pampered, praised, and heeded. Then, as the members of the court gain in prestige and become increasingly autonomous, things begin to turn, and the relationship between those who have dedicated their lives to the cause and those for whom it is merely a career move ends in disenchantment, embitterment, and divorce. In the end, such courts almost invariably disappoint those who have invested their heart and soul to bringing the truth to light.

Among themselves, activists can be a hard-hearted bunch. Theirs is a world riven by bitter quarrels, scandal-mongering, jealous slander, and vindictive scheming. Taken one by one, they are each remarkable individuals; but when they are forced to share the crushing memories, they become carried away with the passion of old lovers. The world of guardians of memory and righters of wrongs, whether they're from Cambodia or elsewhere, is neither virtuous nor particularly kind. To the activists themselves, it can sometimes seem overrun by enemies.

In Phnom Penh, the collaboration between DC-Cam and the judiciary began cordially enough. But as the court started to make its presence felt, the NGO feared losing its preeminent position, and conflicts arose between the two institutions. Two years later, by the time the tribunal was ready to try Duch, its relationship with DC-Cam had degenerated into one of thinly veiled hostility.

Just before the trial opened, DC-Cam announced with much fanfare that it had found a child survivor from S-21. Norng Champhal made his appearance. Yet, contrary to what some were claiming, he had not just been “found.”

A press conference was convened; the survivor appeared, now thirty-nine years old. More drama: Norng Champhal had missed by a mere two days the court's application deadline for inclusion in the trial as a civil plaintiff. DC-Cam asked the court to take into consideration his exceptional and moving case. The prosecutor stepped up to the plate and called Norng Champhal's testimony “essential,” even though he was only a child at the time.

Three decades earlier, Cambodia's new, post–Khmer Rouge rulers had used the boy as a propaganda tool. Now, in the media uproar that flared up before Duch's trial, Norng Champhal again found himself a pawn in a game the stakes of which were far above his head.

While all this was going on, DC-Cam also claimed that it had obtained a never-released Vietnamese film shot at S-21. The prosecutor's office wasn't told about it until four days before the trial's preliminary hearing. The tussle between special-interest groups and egos intensified—all on the victims' behalf, of course. This was not a new phenomenon, nothing is new. But the demagoguery and hypocrisy in the air that day left behind a lasting sense of unease.

The judges didn't cave to the pressure, and Norng Champhal wasn't permitted to assert his victim's rights in court. He is now, however, called as a witness.

Norng Champhal has kept an almost adolescent voice. He has the brown skin of rural Khmers. He keeps his eyes glued to the ground. Duch slips on his spectacles, reads a document, looks up, removes his glasses, and takes a long look at the witness. The defendant is leaning back in his chair, in that relaxed posture he sometimes adopts when he's not particularly interested in the proceedings. Norng Champhal is talking about his mother being photographed upon entering the prison. He starts crying. Duch sits up straight.

Norng Champhal's 2009 deposition contains none of the terrible atrocities that he described in 1979. He describes the painter's studio, the wretched gruel, mosquitoes, gunshots, the hiding place beneath the pile of clothes, his liberation by the Vietnamese troops, being sent to the orphanage. He tells how he saw mutilated corpses abandoned on iron bed-frames and how he fled in fear. There's nothing that isn't already known in his deposition; nothing of substance, from the court's point of view, except for the miraculous story of a handful of children who somehow ended up at S-21 on January 1, 1979, two days before the prison was entirely emptied of inmates. Some prison staff took care of them, more or less. Incredibly, the children survived the final annihilation before being rescued six days later, when the city was liberated. In court, nobody challenges Norng Champhal's 1979 testimony. Nor do any of the judges, prosecutors, or lawyers call into question his more-recent interview with DC-Cam in which he claimed, erroneously, to have been interned in S-21 for “three or four months” before the liberation.

It's probably better this way.

During the adjournment, the defense team holds an agitated meeting. Duch seems especially nervous, his movements quick and sharp. He keeps his fingers pressed together, as though his former life as a soldier has left him forever a quick snap of the arm away from a salute. He gesticulates emphatically. His mangled left hand seems stuck to him like a flipper, which only underscores his agitation. The black robes flock around him; he gives his instructions.

Duch first thinks that Champhal's father
hadn't
been killed at S-21. Then, after consulting the documentation, he concedes that Champhal's father was killed at the prison, after all. Then, a few days after Norng Champhal has given his testimony and his mother's “biography” is finally produced in court, Duch admits to the truth contained in the archives.

Every now and then, while giving testimony, Norng Champhal gives a furtive sideways glance. He regularly weeps, his tears symptoms of a distant and irretrievable trauma pervading a life that others have partially rebuilt for him. What part of his suffering comes from being an orphan? Which of his woes bears testament to the troubles that unscrupulous adults sowed in him? Eventually, a stained veil will be drawn over this bitter episode of Duch's trial. But what it has made clear is that the officials at the People's Court of 1979 were not the only ones to stage the kind of tasteless scenes usually associated with show trials.

T
O BE A TORTURER USUALLY MEANS TO BE ON THE “RIGHT” SIDE OF A DICTATORSHIP.
Yet even those who stood to gain from the Khmer Rouge's atrocities found that quality of life is a relative thing. No one in Democratic Kampuchea was allowed to visit their parents. No one retained custody over their own children. Children under six were entrusted to older women. Those over six lived according to the collectivist mold, in which they were supposed to spend the rest of their lives.

Enjoying oneself was out of the question. Falling in love was considered bourgeois. Married life was limited to seeing each other one day out of every ten. Couples avoided spending quality time together. All marriages had to have the Party's blessing. Sex outside of marriage was a criminal offense. Communism adhered to a strict puritanical ideology.

Duch weighed forty-nine kilos at the time. He was entitled to a small bowl of rice and two dishes a day, and he points out that his was a privileged diet. One former staff member describes how he was so hungry he resorted to eating the fake medicine that the painter Bou Meng described as rabbit pellets. Every three or four months, Duch went to a place that served Chinese beer. Going more often would have aroused suspicion.

To ensure better control over staff and to keep the security perimeter around S-21 completely sealed, the facility was run as a family affair. The five members of the female interrogation team, for example, were the wives of male S-21 interrogators. Their team leader was married to Hor, S-21's second-in-command.

The wife of another staff member worked in the kitchen. This system made internal purges easier to carry out. Whenever a staff member fell from grace, his wife and children could easily be “resolved.”

Duch met his wife in 1974. They married in December 1975, four months after the creation of S-21.

“I was a cadre of Democratic Kampuchea. The woman I married was a member of the Communist Party of Kampuchea. I wasn't allowed to marry any ‘April Seventeeners,'” he says, referring to those doomed souls who only came under the Khmer Rouge's authority on the day of the victory of the Revolution, April 17, 1975.

Their first child was born in April 1977 and a second in December 1978, three weeks before the prison closed and Duch's family fled Phnom Penh.

In the eyes of the Khmer Rouge, the only time a family could be brought together in the traditional sense was when its members were to be executed. If parents were killed, then their children had to be, too. Being a child of the Angkar guaranteed no other privilege than that of once again becoming the child of your parents on the day of their damnation. Such should have been the fate meant for little Norng Champhal.

Judge Cartwright asks Duch if the estimate of children killed at S-21—1 percent of the total number of victims—is correct. Duch replies that an archival document attests how 160 children were sent to the execution field
in a single day.

“That's more than 1 percent,” says the mathematician.

“I think you're correct,” agrees the judge, her voice tight.

By the time Duch's first child was born, he had given ten years of his life to the Party. In court, he tries to downplay the fact that he enjoyed the rare privilege of living with his wife and baby more or less as a family. His children were too young for school at the time, and in any case, all the schools had been closed. The children of cadres had no more access to education than did other children. The party made sure everyone was equally ignorant.

As a teacher, Kaing Guek Eav had passionately believed in universal education. He had devoted himself to his students, strongly encouraging them in their pursuit of knowledge. So when he is asked in court what he thought of the sudden abolition of the education system, he can't bring himself to give a straight answer. Some contradictions are so great he can only come at them circuitously. “The education required by the Party was that everyone be loyal to it, perfectly loyal. We had to devote ourselves with absolute determination to the Party. That was the requirement to get a job.”

“Did you have an opinion about that policy?”

“Although I saw it as a challenge that would be difficult to achieve, I had no choice but to apply it. There was no way I could question it.”

“Why not teach?”

DUCH BECAME A FATHER
while he was running S-21 and sending hundreds of children to their deaths. No one understands this. Even Duch struggles to understand it. The execution of children and babies was a part of his administration with which he wasn't overly concerned. It's also one of the crimes with which his conscience struggles.