Khmer Rouge prison boss details regime purges [-Duch was a snitch?]

28/4/2009
AFP

The former Khmer Rouge prison chief told Cambodia’s war crimes trial yesterday how staff at his jail were killed for any minor mistakes they made while performing their jobs.

Duch—whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav—apologised last month when his trial started, accepting blame for overseeing the extermination of around 15,000 people when he ran Tuol Sleng prison.
He said yesterday that he would report to his superiors any minor mistakes by staff members at Tuol Sleng, also known as S-21. Regime leaders would then order the workers and their families killed, he said.

“The purges went on and only a few people were left. When the husband was smashed, the wife would end up the same,” he said. The communist regime used the term “smash” to refer to killing its enemies.

“The staff of S-21 was arrested by S-21. S-21 detained them, S-21 interrogated them with torture and finally they were smashed by S-21,” he added.

Duch, however, told the court young people who worked at the prison were not touched. The young were easier to train and transform from “gentle to cruel”, he said.

As Duch, 66, politely answered questions about the organisation of Tuol Sleng prison, he strongly denied he created a list of 10 ruthless orders that remains on display at the site, now a genocide museum.

“The discipline of security, which has 10 rules...was fabricated by the Vietnamese when they came in (and toppled the Khmer Rouge in 1979),” Duch told the court.
Duch said he first saw the list of orders last year, when investigators brought him to the prison in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh to re-enact his crimes.

A large board displaying the list on how to behave during interrogations, which includes an order that prisoners cannot cry when flogged or subjected to electric shocks, is still posted in the main courtyard at Tuol Sleng.

The list also tells prisoners to sit still and wait for orders, answer questions immediately without waiting for time to reflect, and warns them of further lashes or electric shocks if they fail to comply.

Duch is charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture and premeditated murder for his role in the notorious 1975 to 1979 regime known for its “Killing Fields”.

However he has denied prosecutors’ claims that he played a central role in the Khmer Rouge’s iron-fisted rule, and maintains he never personally executed anyone.

He faces life in jail but the court does not have the power to impose the death penalty. Four other senior leaders from the regime are scheduled to be tried within the next year.

Many believe the UN-sponsored tribunal is the last chance to find justice for victims of the regime, which killed up to 2mn people through starvation, overwork, torture and execution. The Khmer Rouge were ousted by Hanoi-backed forces in 1979, who discovered Tuol Sleng and established the facility as a museum to display the regime’s crimes.

The tribunal was formed in 2006 after nearly a decade of wrangling between the UN and Cambodian government.

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