The Master of Confessions (28 page)

“But everything was compromised when Nic Dunlop found me,” he says, struggling to hide his bitter regret.

Nic Dunlop is a charming, thoughtful, and reasonable man. So much so it is funny to imagine this young Irish photographer's curious habit of carrying what was then one of the few existing photos of Duch around in his pocket during his trips through the region. One day in April 1999, on the outskirts of Samlaut, the tenacious journalist recognized the former head of S-21. The chameleonic Hang Pin was working for an American refugee-assistance organization. When Dunlop confronted him with his past, Duch immediately conceded the truth.

“I firmly believe that nothing can be kept secret forever. You can keep something secret for a while, but not for very long,” he tells the court.

On May 10, 1999, Duch was arrested and transferred to the military prison in Phnom Penh.

W
ERE CIRCUMSTANCES DIFFERENT,
Mam Nai would be sitting next to Duch in the dock. He was part of the entire murderous undertaking, from M-13 to S-21. Though ten years older than Duch, Mam Nai remained his subordinate throughout the Revolution. Mam Nai isn't and has never been a talkative man. Unlike many other former S-21 staff, he has steadfastly refused to talk to those researching the Khmer Rouge killing machine. Unapologetically severe, Mam Nai lives in the countryside. He grows surly the moment anyone criticizes the Revolution; he is not targeted by the purely symbolic justice required by the Cambodian government and opportunistically promoted by international law activists. At seventy-six, the only still-living chief interrogator from S-21 can spend his last years at ease, discreetly, and leave it to his former boss to deal with the burdens of shame and public remorse. Mam Nai has just one difficult moment to get through: he's been summoned to testify before the tribunal.

Mam Nai is about 1.75 meters tall, a lofty figure among his countrymen. On the first day of his deposition, he's wearing a dull, bottle green jacket. The Khmer Rouge used to wear
krama
s thrown casually around their necks, the ends hanging down their chests. The
krama
s were the only colored items of clothing allowed with the otherwise strictly black revolutionary uniforms. In court, Mam Nai always wears a
krama
.

Mam Nai's
krama
perfectly matches his jacket. He has suffered from a skin condition since childhood, and multicolored fingerless woolen gloves protect his hands. The hair on the top of his head and temples has grayed, while that on the sides and the back of his neck is still dark. Oddly, it looks as though someone has tonsured a circle the size of a tennis ball into the back of his head. The following day, he wears a high-necked blue-gray shirt, again with a matching
krama
. Mam Nai exudes an outdated, almost psychedelic, sense of style. In a rasping voice, his head and hands and upper body continually in motion with those slight movements common among the elderly, Mam Nai quickly makes it clear that he has no intention of divulging Party secrets. “I was assigned to interrogate low-value prisoners. That's all.”

What about torture? “I don't know. From what I saw—and speaking in general terms, torture may or may not have been used—I didn't see any sign of it. I wasn't paying close attention. It's possible that torture took place. But I can't give any details about it.”

Mam Nai's notebook was found at S-21. It is 396 pages long. It contains an account of staff meetings and training sessions. There are numerous references to the use of torture. This is typical of Mam Nai. He claims that no one ever gave him an order to torture a prisoner, that he confined himself to simply making notes of the meetings, and that he was and remains completely unaware of the other interrogators' methods.

What if the prisoner didn't confess? “I would tell the guards to take him back to his cell, to give him more time to think it over.”

And what about the executions? “That subject isn't clear to me. I have no knowledge of this. The prisoners were simply taken back to their cells.”

Mam Nai says he knows nothing about how S-21 was organized, nothing about the identities of the other interrogators or even how many there were, nothing about the conditions in which the prisoners were held, nothing about the number of them being held, including the Vietnamese, of whom he was in charge. “There might've been ten or twenty of them,” he says.

What about Duch's instructions? “I don't remember anything about them.”

Ot dang te—
I don't know—he says curtly, over and over.

“We acted as though we could see or hear nothing, like the kapok tree,” he says, referring to a tropical tree whose seedpods are covered in a silken, cotton-like fiber that is both water- and rot-proof. “That is why I am still alive today.”

The public gallery reacts angrily to Mam Nai's denials. But the glass wall dividing the courtroom from the gallery prevents the witness from hearing the disapproving murmur that then rises into a collective nervous laugh.

“Do you have trouble with your memory?” asks an irritated Judge Lavergne.

“It's been a habit ever since my studies. I don't remember dates. Sometimes I can't even remember the names of my children,” replies the witness, unabashed.

Mam Nai, aware of all the traps that interrogators lay, tries to keep his answers short. But attack him and he bursts to life, revealing a man still committed to the very beliefs that have misled him. “The country was under attack from American imperialists, therefore detaining prisoners was a necessary measure. Living conditions were horrible for all of us. Everyone ate the same thing, more or less.”

Sometimes he blames the hierarchy: “As a subordinate, I was told to put it in writing, that's all. Of course that's my writing. But I didn't know what tricks my superiors were up to. I was their subordinate and I simply had to follow orders.”

Or else it's on account of that vexing problem, a poor memory: “Do you remember anything about these documents, Mr. Mam Nai?” asks the judge, referring to interrogation reports bearing Mam Nai's signature.

“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?”

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.

T
HE 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: