Duch Choi Ch'kai Anh

In 1975 the Khmer Rouge converted the Tuol Svay Prey High School on the outskirts of Phnom Penh into the murderous Tuol Sleng or S-21 prison. An estimated 17,000 prisoners were subjected to the following code of behavior.

1. You must answer accordingly to my question. Don’t turn them away.
2. Don’t try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that, you are strictly prohibited to contest me.
3. Don’t be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.
4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.
5. Don’t tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.
6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.
7. Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.
8. Don’t make pretext about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your secret or traitor.
9. If you don’t follow all the above rules, you shall get many many lashes of electric wire.
10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.

In 1979 12 survivors exited from the three-story building at the end of Angkor's reign of terror. The other inmates had been buried in the killing fields. The architects of this massacre fled the reprisals of the Vietnamese in 1979 and the most notorious killer Comrade Duch sought refuge in Thailand. He was demoted for not having destroyed the incriminating documents at Tuol Sleng, but escaped justice by becoming a teacher. In the Khmer Rouge times teachers were executed without remorse. After the murder of his wife Duch sought salvation with the Western fundamentalists pursuing souls in Cambodia, but his past chased him to a corner. A court of justice sentenced Duch to life imprisonment, but during the trial he said, "I think the Khmer Rouge would already have been demolished, but Mr Kissinger and Richard Nixon were quick Lon No, and then the Khmer Rouge noted the golden opportunity." Duch asked to be released by the tribunal, admitting his guilt. Kissinger is walking free. Why shouldn't he? "Whenever I've been in Phnom Penh I've asked the older people what they think of the Khmer Rouge and their reply comes as a surprise to most westerners raising on the litany of 'never again' for the Nazis.

"It's over. We want peace. Nothing more." A taxi driver said waiting for two dutch tourists visiting S-21.

"What about the trials?"

"We don't understand trials. All we know is that it's over." He was old enough to have lived under the Khmer Rouge as a teenager. He spoke a little French. That linguistic skill was a death sentence under the eyes of Duch.

"Au revoir." I doubted that I would see him again, but we shared a beer later that night on Quay Sisowith. He laughed with all the joy. Five 5Angkor beers can give a man who has lived long enough to wake up from a nightmare with his humor intact.

Duch Choi Ch'kai Anh

Read THE GATE by Francois Bizot. It says it all.