Humanity was 'smashed'

Kaing Guek Eav (left), told the court part of his job was to train cadres to torture and execute prisoners while teaching the guards to be good communists. --PHOTO: AP

The Straits Times
http://www.straitstimes.com

April 21, 2009

PHNOM PENH - A FORMER Khmer Rouge jailer told Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes court on Tuesday a jungle camp where starving prisoners were tortured was 'a place where humanity was smashed'.

The jailer, known as Duch and whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, told the court part of his job was to train cadres to torture and execute prisoners while teaching the guards to be good communists. 'I wanted to educate them to find a way which was called the revolutionary way,' he said.

The court has been hearing evidence about M-13, a secret jungle camp which Duch ran during the 1971 to 1975 Khmer Rouge insurgency against the then US-backed government, to better understand Tuol Sleng's organising structure.

Asked why prisoners were killed instead of re-educated, Duch answered: 'We were not allowed to teach logic or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to prisoners. If we did not follow such orders we would be beheaded.'

Under questioning, Duch also told how local villagers were obliged to send their teenage children to work for him. 'Normally no one would reject such a request... because they were afraid to be killed,' he said.

A former jungle prison camp guard told the court Tuesday he was so afraid of Duch he 'could not look him in the face' when he worked under him at the communist movement's M-13 prison in the early 1970s. Chan Khorn, 53, recalled how he was forced to attend 'self-criticism' sessions to improve his work for the jailer.

Duch regularly told comrades that they would be punished if they failed to perform their duties, and held several 'self-criticism' meetings over the course of a year, the witness said.

'These self-criticism meetings were designed to criticise one another. I myself, for example, revealed my mistakes and then received criticisms from other guards,' Chan Khorn told the court. 'No one would dare criticise (Duch). None. Because he was the most important chairperson of the place, who would risk criticising him?' said the witness, who had to guard his own grandfathers at the brutal M-13 prison.

On Tuesday Duch added that encountering his former guard Chan Khorn in court made him emotional.

'We have been far away from each other for almost 36 years. When I see my former guard, I am moved,' Duch said, saying he felt 'affection' toward the guards. -- AFP