[For context: In August of 1978, Kerry Hamill, a New Zealander, and some friends were sailing around the world when they tried crossing the Gulf of Thailand. They were caught in bad weather, and sought shelter near an island. At this point, a Khmer Rouge patrol boat fired upon them, killing his friend Stuart, a Canadian, and captured the rest. Hamill was later tortured brutally and executed as a ‘foreign spy.’]
Christmas of 1978 came and went with no news of Kerry since Singapore. Sixteen more months passed before his youngest brother, then sixteen, learned that Kerry had been captured, tortured, and murdered by Pol Pot’s regime, which by that time had been overthrown. Family arguments at home multiplied and got increasingly heated. Kerry’s second sibling, with whom he’d been very close, sank into a deep depression. Eight months after he learned of Kerry’s death, Kerry’s brother threw himself off a cliff. He was the same age that Kerry had been when he died.
The youngest Hamill is forty-five years old when he takes the stand at Duch’s trial.
”Duch, when you killed Kerry you killed my brother John as well,” he says, looking directly at the defendant.
Duch gives a little nod. He is sitting straight, his forearms on the table, his eyes fixed on the witness. It’s his usual posture of respect and attentiveness.
After losing her second son in a little over two years, Kerry’s mother rarely left her bed. Her room was like a mausoleum, says Kerry’s youngest brother. Depressed and suffering from shingles, she lost all interest in life. Kerry’s father, meanwhile, retreated into himself. He stopped going to work and soon retired. They couldn’t go on as parents.
”Our immediate family became a little bubble, and we became very reluctant to interact with others,” says Kerry’s brother.
For a while, the youngest brother lost himself to drinking. His schoolwork deteriorated. He couldn’t stop the images from eating away at him. He imagined Kerry seated among a pile of tires, being burned alive. That’s how the Khmer Rouge erased every trace of the foreigners they killed – by burning them on street corners, though they probably killed them first.
Then there’s the haunting photo from the archives of S-21: a man on the ground with his feet shackled, lying in his own blood yet propping himself up on one arm, bravely trying to raise himself as the photographer releases the shutter. The photo isn’t clear enough to give us the man’s identity. But for Kerry’s little brother, in tears, there’s little doubt. “For me, this is my gorgeous, beautiful brother Kerry Hamill at S-21,” he says. “This is the sort of image that haunted me when I was sixteen and still haunts me today. I have lost so much sleep over this image.”
Source:
Cruvellier, T., and Alex Gilly. “Chapter 15.” The Master of Confessions: The Making of a Khmer Rouge Torturer. Ecco, 2014. 110-11. Print.
Further Reading:
សាឡុត ស (Saloth Sar) / ប៉ុល ពត (Pol Pot)
សារមន្ទីរឧក្រិដ្ឋកម្មប្រល័យពូជសាសន៍ទួលស្លែង (Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum) / Security Prison 21 (S-21)
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