Duch trial: François Bizot testifies about both the man and the criminal he got to know

Kambol (Phnom Penh, Cambodia). 08/04/2009: 6th day of Kaing Guek Eav trial at the ECCC - Notebook of François Bizot, the author of Le Portail (The Gate), which he wrote when he was detained by Duch at the M13 detention camp ©John Vink/ Magnum

Ka-set

By Stéphanie Gée
09-04-2009

As he was based in Cambodia as a researcher from the Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient (French School for East Asian studies, EFEO, in Paris), François Bizot found himself detained for two months and a half by the Khmer Rouge, and more particularly in a camp supervised by Duch, whose trial before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) opened on March 30th in Phnom Penh. The ordeal he went through left a deep imprint on his life, so much so that he wrote it down in a book, The Gate, “a literary approach based on a reconstruction, on an impression”, he stresses. As he was called to the bar by the Trial Chamber to testify on Wednesday April 8th, he spoke in a rather discriminative way and went back over the duality of Duch, the nice and convinced revolutionary young man he got to know and the great criminal he was.

During the previous days, before being reminded of the rule according to which names of witnesses who have not appeared yet before the court cannot be quoted during the hearing, the former S-21 director mentioned the name of Bizot and called him “my Bizot”. He explained that he told his superior after the Frenchman’s arrest by the Khmer Rouge, that he was not a CIA agent like they accused him of being, but a researcher. After three months, he managed to have him released.

Detention and a much uncertain outcome
Before the court, François Bizot, now 69 and living in Thailand, goes back over his arrest by patrolling members of the militia on October 10th 1971 as he was on his way to a pagoda in Udong, located some twenty miles away from Phnom Penh, with two Cambodian collaborators. The excursion was part of the work he led on the Cambodian Buddhist ritual. As the first witness to appear at Duch’s trial, he recounts that back then, he was called before a “popular tribunal” and that his interrogator asserted with confidence that he knew him, saw him in Saigon and claimed he was serving the cause of American imperialism. He denied such claims and invited the unconvincing court to immediately kill him if they thought he was a spy. The comment generated a burst of applause on the part of some fifty villagers who attended the indictment. In the evening, in the house where he was being detained with his feet shackled to wood beams alongside other prisoners, clamouring voices rose, saying “What are you waiting for? Undress him!”. His shackles were undone and, blindfolded, he was brought towards what he thought was certain death. Was it a sham or was there failure in the execution? He still doesn’t know, but one this is for sure: nothing happened. The next day, he was transferred to the M-13 detention centre which Duch supervised and where his two friends were also sent. He was welcomed by a cynical and aggressive official before finding out that the true master of the place was in fact Duch, a gentle young man.

Daily interrogations followed, conducted by Duch himself in an “ever polite way”, “with a certain kindness”, and without ever being beaten up. He now says that Duch’s reputation was that of a “tireless man who spoke little and put a lot of himself into his responsibilities as a camp leader”. He managed to obtain from the Khmer Rouge cadre a pen and a notebook in which he wrote down, apart from his memories and a few poems, a persuasive argumentation to prove that he was indeed a researcher. He never parted with it, never read it again, and now presents it at Duch’s trial.

When Duch broke the news about his imminent release, François Bizot, now going bald and sporting a shirt and tie, did not believe it. “One must be aware, Sir [talking to one of the judges], that nothing was being said. Lies were the oxygen we used to breathe and expire with our lungs. Lies were present... When they took someone to their death, it was denied until the very last moment...” The eve of the big day, i.e. Christmas day, as he regained freedom to move around, he spent his last evening with Duch, sat by a wood fire.

Discovering the monster and his human and disturbing nature
On two occasions, the researcher, as he recounts it, guessed that acts of violence were perpetrated on prisoners to make them talk. He opened up in front of Duch on that last evening and asked “who hit”. “Duch did not hesitate to reply that he occasionally hit prisoners when they lied or when their testimonies were contradictory, that he could not stand lies and that this work made him sick but it was what Angkar [the organisation behind which the Communist Party of Kampuchea hid] expected from him... I was afraid. And I think that this event, which was fundamental for me, is at the origin of a long process I went through. I must say that until then, I considered myself as being on the good side of humanity and that there were other monsters I would never resemble, thank God for that. I thought that there was difference in the story, in the sensibility and that it was a state of nature...” On that Christmas day, he opened up. He was expecting to find a monster after such a reply but discovered a man in front of him, “a Communist-Marxist ready to lose his life if necessary for his country and for the revolution [...] and that the final goal of his commitment was the good of Cambodia and fighting injustice...” He continues: “The end that justified the means was the independence of Cambodia, the country’s right to auto-determination and putting an end to injustice. Cambodians were not the first ones in History who killed for dreams”, he concluded with a dreary voice, worried about choosing the right words.

Meeting Duch shook his way of thinking
When Duch resurfaced as journalists found him and the Cambodian authorities arrested him shortly after in 1999, François Bizot thought it was “a good thing to have people know that these were not the deeds of the odd monster out but that they came from a man who resembled others. And I realised that I also had to discern what man does with who he is, but also that being guilty of what we do must not interfere with who we are. I am also afraid I understood that the situation he was in did not allow him to go backwards”.

“My encounter with Duch marked my destiny and all my thinking, everything I am today, for a simple and tragic reason: I must find a way by myself to deal with what is inside of me concerning dual data; on the one hand, that of a man [Duch] who was the vector and the executive of nationalised killings – and I cannot imagine that I could today put myself in his place with, inside of me, so many horrors committed – and on the other hand, the memories I have of a young man who made a commitment with his life, his existence, for a cause and towards a goal which relied on the thought that not only crime was legitimate but it was also meritorious. I do not know what to do with that, Sir. My existence led me to live closely near both of these characters and I cannot get rid of the idea that what was perpetrated by Duch could have been done by someone else and when I try to understand it, this is absolutely not about minimising the impact, depth and abomination of his crime...And in order to measure that abomination, it was definitely not by presenting Duch as the odd one out, the monster, but by acknowledging the humanity that is his own and which was obviously not an obstacle to the killings he perpetrated. It is this same realisation about the characteristics of the ambiguity of this humanity which causes my tragedy today, Sir.”

Heated exchange between a Civil Party lawyer and Duch
Earlier during the day, Duch was once again questioned by Civil Party lawyers. His international lawyer, Mr. Roux, urged the court to ask Ms. Studzinsky to “talk to the accused more respectfully”. The German lawyer for Group 2 of Civil Parties pestered the former head of S-21 and was annoyed at him for not answering her questions. “Do you understand my question?” “You know, I am fine with answering but maybe you do not understand my answers!” Duch retorts, keeping his self-control and ceremonious politeness and apologising every time his memory fails him. “You did not understand the situation [...] This is what I told the Chamber yesterday...” Tenacious, he does not yield: “I have already answered your question…” When the turn for a Cambodian lawyer came to ask him questions, Duch could not help saying: “It is easier to make myself understood in Khmer!”

“Neither speak nor know, neither see nor hear”
He then uses the same leitmotiv as he did during previous hearings: he did not kill with his own hands but he gave the orders, which nevertheless makes his liable. “If I hadn’t done it, someone else would have done it instead”, he adds. When asked by his French lawyer about the taste for secrecy within the Communist Party, he quotes a Khmer Rouge saying – The longer you maintain confidentiality, the longer you live” – and then enumerates the four golden rules which prevailed among revolutionary ranks: “neither speak nor know, neither see nor hear”. He nods at Mr. Roux when the latter says: yes, from the top to the bottom of the ladder, everyone kept the secret because everyone knew that if they violated the secret, their life would immediately be at risk.

And when his lawyer reports that he used to be described as an “authoritarian and tough” leader, he does not deny anything. He admits that his “direction was filled with authority”, that he did not speak freely, as his superiors taught him to do, and that he operated “smoothly but strictly”. Mr. Roux tries to prove that the system established by the Khmer Rouge even before they seized power “worked with secrecy, the absolute obedience of orders from superiors and the breakdown of individual personality”. Later, the accused explains that obeying orders from the party was a necessity, a duty, when “today, we see all those acts considered as crimes” and those who were considered as enemies yesterday as today’s victims.

Duch recalls he helped about ten persons escape certain death and adds altogether that he does not consider this as a “particularly valorous” act. “This is a drop in the ocean of crimes I committed!”