[The following is in regards to the trial of Kaing Guek Eav, commonly known as Comrade Duch, who was the head of the Khmer Rouge’s internal security branch, in which he oversaw the Tuol Sleng (S-21) prison camp where thousands were held for interrogation and torture. While the trial itself takes place in the early 2000s, I still felt it appropriate, as the trial only covered events taking place between the years 1975-1979. Every testimony is from that time period, and everything depicted by the author, who was present at the trial, are essentially reactions to this gruesome period of history by contemporaries who were present or had participated. In that sense, I feel this fits well for our purposes, and I do not believe it breaks the 20 Year Rule.]
[For context: Ouk Ket was a student from Cambodia who studied in Paris. He later met a Frenchwoman and they were married in October of 1971. They had two children together. When the Khmer Rouge first took over his home country, he decided to return home and spend some time participating in what he believed, optimistically, would be a new golden era for Cambodia. He didn’t realized he would be detained on arrival and executed.]
”Ket was very happy to return to Cambodia and participate in national reconstruction,” his wife says from the stand.
He seemed confident. On the bus, I was looking at his very handsome face when I intuitively said, “If one day someone comes to tell me that you’re dead, I’ll know that it will be because you’ve been murdered.” He patted my cheek and said, “Cambodians aren’t savages.” Then he said, “Maybe I’ll have to work in the fields a bit.” That must have been the worst thing to him, I mean, the thing that seemed the hardest to him. Who goes back to their country knowing that they’re going to be killed? He went home confidently, in high spirits.
Ouk Ket sent a postcard from Pakistan and another from China, from where he wrote that he would land in Phnom Penh on June 11. After that, there was no more news. His wife heard nothing for two years. In December 1979, she asked the Cambodian representative to the United Nations for news of her husband. He told her, “Don’t put your life on hold for him.” Later, she learned about the existence of S-21, and that Ouk Ket’s name was in the prison’s archives.
In 1991, in the middle of the peace negotiations then taking place under the aegis of the UN, she went to Cambodia for the first time, taking her two children with her. The family went to S-21 and to Choeung Ek. They searched the archives. On the forty-third line of a list of people executed on December 8, 1977, they read: “Ouk Ket, thirty-one years, Foreign Affairs, Third Undersecretary. Date of entry: June 15, 1977.” He had been in cell 23, room 2, Building C.
Ouk Ket’s widow describes how she decided then and there that the crime would not go unpunished. Usually, it’s the victors rather than the victims who decide such things. But now, at long last, she can stand before the court and ask for justice, though of course nothing will ever satisfy that need.
Neither Ouk Ket’s widow nor his daughter refers to Duch by name from the stand. They refer to him as “Case Number One,” which is what the tribunal designated his trial, its first case. Throughout their testimonies, the two women, in turn, use only this case number to refer to the man who reduced their husband and father to a number.
Source:
Cruvellier, T., and Alex Gilly. “Chapter 32.” The Master of Confessions: The Making of a Khmer Rouge Torturer. Ecco, 2014. 251-52. Print.
Further Reading:
សារមន្ទីរឧក្រិដ្ឋកម្មប្រល័យពូជសាសន៍ទួលស្លែង (Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum) / Security Prison 21 (S-21)
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