FAR FROM THE universe of S-21, on the other side of the city, Sokheang found himself billeted in a building overlooking the river. ‘K-7’ was a liaison centre and post office which came directly under the control of the Organisation. It took up an entire block of buildings that now includes the Air France office, UNESCO and the favourite haunt of expats on the promenade, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. Sokheang was told to stay there and await instructions. Here messages from all the different administrative centres inside and outside the city were processed. It was also a transit point for cadres going to and from different offices, some known, some unknown–including S-21.
Days went by and nothing happened. Sokheang and his comrades grew restless and decided to venture out into the empty boulevards. The breeze of the cool season swept through the open streets as they climbed inside vacant buildings looking for old books. Sokheang found the atmosphere surreal and unnerving. ‘We saw everything scattered, everywhere was in disorder,’ he said. ‘It was like a ghost city.’ Occasionally, like a reflection, they saw people in the distance dressed, as they were, in black, wearing Mao caps; otherwise they were alone. ‘We were afraid to go far from our place, because it was too quiet,’ he said. As they ambled along, he thought of his family and how he hoped that he would one day be reunited with them. ‘It made me very, very sorry and upset.’
One day Sokheang and his comrades were moved to another vacant building nearby. While they were cleaning out an abandoned apartment they knocked down a wardrobe propped against one of the walls. Behind it they found tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of diamonds someone had hastily hidden there. The former owner must have panicked in the last days of the war and stored them safely away as the black-clad guerrillas strode through the streets below. They took the diamonds to the head of K-7, Comrade Ky, and gave them to him to give to the Organisation, ‘for the reconstruction of the country’. They found other riches, too: they had wandered into a bank where old Lon Nol banknotes lay strewn about. Sometimes they came across US dollars lying in the gutter, which they ignored. ‘They were useless to us,’ said Sokheang.
In Khmer Rouge-controlled Cambodia the values of the old world were turned on their head. Unlike the decadent ways before, nothing was to be wasted. Old perfume bottles, Sokheang discovered, could be made into oil lamps. Some of these lamps could be made out of empty M-16 or AK-47 magazines that they found lying in the street. They also looked for cutlery and plates as they too were in short supply. In the evenings they often walked across the road and down to the water’s edge where they caught fish in the slow-moving waters of the Tonle Sap River, which they cooked over fires at night.
Early one morning a messenger arrived telling Sokheang and his group that they were to go to Wat Ounalom for a political seminar. This was the pagoda that Duch had stayed in as a student. It was a five-minute walk from where K-7 was located. They gathered their things and wandered up the street to the grey building fashioned in the Angkorian style.
A grinning Khieu Samphan appeared. ‘He was very friendly, all smiles, he shook hands with everybody and chatted with some old friends of his,’ said Sokheang. Despite Sokheang’s doubts, he felt somewhat reassured by Khieu Samphan’s disarming charisma. Dressed in black with a krama, as they were, he told them how the war against US imperialism had been won. After several hours Khieu Samphan left. That was the only time Sokheang ever saw him. The rest of the lectures were given by a Comrade Phum for the ten days that they stayed at the wat.
Sokheang and his comrades were left with a generally positive view of the revolution. The Khmer Rouge, they felt, were patriots, he said, and they spoke very eloquently. The talks seemed to have been designed to allay any fears that they might have had. ‘Even though we didn’t agree with many things, our general perception was that things were going as planned,’ said Sokheang. They were told that for the revolution to succeed the people had to produce three tonnes of rice per hectare immediately and industrialise the country within thirteen years. ‘We felt it wasn’t possible,’ said Sokheang. In the countryside people were literally being worked to death to reach these unrealistic quotas. The rice was being stored and then sent to unknown destinations whilst the majority of the people starved.
Every day at the wat, after dinner, they discussed that day’s lectures. Although Sokheang enjoyed the theoretical lessons he dreaded this time. It was then that the selfcriticism sessions began. As in M-13 and S-21, and in communes throughout the country, these sessions were a time for people to assess themselves in front of the others, comparing their performances to revolutionary principles. They had to list their ‘strong points’ and their ‘shortcomings’ to each other. They then took it in turns to criticise or praise wherever appropriate with the party line. Finally the chief of the group would make an assessment and later report to the chief of the camp.
Sokheang remembered these meetings well. ‘I felt very uncomfortable,’ he said. ‘It was humiliating to expose myself to the others and let them raise questions and criticise me without limit.’ They were permitted to defend themselves, they were told, but they had to accept the criticisms with humility. People’s commitments to the revolution were being scrutinised. It was a tightrope, to be handled with care. Under the guise of revolutionary criticism old rivalries could find expression. ‘People used this opportunity to raise the old issues and use the sessions for revenge,’ he said.
After ten days of political lectures Sokheang and his group were sent back to K-7. Another three weeks went by. Despondency crept back and they grew bored. They were told nothing and given nothing to do. It was then that people began to disappear. Usually a motorbike would materialise.
‘Comrade,’ they would say, ‘please prepare your belongings. The Organisation needs you.’ No-one dared ask where they went. When it was time to return to the cooperative in Preah Vihear, ten people out of Sokheang’s group of thirty comrades had disappeared.
While Sokheang was kept waiting and guessing what he would be assigned, Duch was running his prison with a ruthless efficiency.
Nothing in the former schoolhouse took place without Duch’s approval. His control was total. If he wasn’t on the phone to Son Sen or signing orders, he would inspect the activities of the prison, checking on his staff, often with several bodyguards in tow. The staff never knew when he might appear.
Dressed in black, his green Mao cap pulled over his head and a black-and-white krama hung loosely around his neck, in his breast pocket were two pens, the only sign of his rank, which, at the time, was the equivalent of a regimental commander. Under his arm he carried papers in a dossier and concealed beneath his top, in a holster, was his own K-54 pistol.
Duch hurried his way around the prison. The Khmer Rouge produced two different kinds of cigarettes: Kotab, which was reserved for senior cadres like Duch, then the unfiltered Klok or Bayon cigarettes for the lower ranks. Kotab were coveted by the staff. Duch never finished his cigarettes. He usually threw them away half-smoked before lighting another. When he had gone, the interrogators and guards picked up the discarded butts to smoke themselves.
Prak Khan rarely saw Duch during the day. It was usually at night that Duch would appear in his interrogation room to observe him at work. Duch would take the day’s confessions away from him to read and would later send them back, usually with a note: ‘Open the report to see my corrections!’ Duch underlined the points he was not satisfied with and instructed the interrogators to question the prisoners still further. When the answers didn’t conform to the conspiratorial frameworks that had already been established, or if there wasn’t enough detail implicating others, Duch would return to interrogate the prisoners himself. If the prisoners still gave him the same answers, then he would explode into a rage, kicking and beating them. Most of the time, Prak Khan’s team used rods or tree branches to beat the prisoners, but Duch always shocked the prisoner with electrical wires.
Prak Khan was terrified of his commandant. Duch despised what he perceived as laziness or incompetence. If he found fault with the interrogator, or if they couldn’t understand what was being demanded of them, Duch would slam his fist on the table and grind his teeth. Prak Khan knew that other interrogators had been arrested for less.
On one occasion, when an interrogator had made a mistake, Duch went to the interrogation room, incensed. Duch grabbed a stick and began to hit him. ‘It was very frightening to see,’ said one guard. After shouting and threatening the interrogator, Duch bellowed, ‘Don’t make any mistakes again!’ The interrogator was later killed.
Nearly all of Duch’s staff were young peasant boys and girls with very little in the way of a formal education. Separated from their families and taken from their homes, they had suffered a gruelling civil war. They then found themselves plucked from obscurity and elevated to work in the regime’s most sensitive and important institution. They were perfect fodder for indoctrination.
Looking at the surviving mug shots of the staff one can trace something of the arrogance of youth in their eyes. On my visits to the museum when I leafed through the photographs of the guards, I often tried to imagine them standing in line outside building A with Duch at the front. ‘We will be vigilant and determined to successfully guard our enemy!’ they cry in robotic unison, their fists pumping the air above their heads. ‘Determined! Determined! Determined!’
Having spent so much time looking at S-21’s photographs, which are all black and white, I had come to view the Khmer Rouge period in monochrome and the activities of the prison being carried out under a heavy grey sky. In contrast to the golden sunlight that flooded the compound now, it had become impossible to imagine it in any other way.
One black-and-white photograph in the archive showed seven young men from S-21 on top of what looked like a roof of a shophouse. Some have their hands on their hips. One has his sleeve rolled up displaying a watch. Others have their hands in their pockets, their heads tilted back looking with an affected sneer. Only one is smiling. They look like an Asian street gang.
Everything was seen in terms of a constant struggle. There were two revolutionary battlefields: the Samoraphoum Kraoy or ‘rear battlefield’ and the Samoraphoum Muk or ‘front-line battlefield’. They were the rear. They were told how the entire nation relied on them and that the country expected them to be loyal and move against their enemies with all their might. Here in the confines of the interrogation room their rage was endorsed by the Organisation. They were the last line of defence.
The realm of S-21 was absolute. They were told that these prisoners, including the children, were the ‘enemy’ and they believed it. They were told that S-21 was ‘the right hand of the party’, ‘the soul of the country’, and ‘the heart of the nation’. The induction and political lectures given by Duch, Chan and Son Sen were peppered with references to the purity of their cause. They were told to be ‘resolute’, ‘determined’ and ‘clear’ in their undertakings. The job of S-21, they were told, was to ‘uphold the prestige of the nation’.
It was a world of polar opposites and extremes of great clarity, with no room for reflection of any kind. Hardened by the war, moulded by the harsh discipline the Khmer Rouge imposed, and pumped by a righteous rhetoric underscored by fear, the young guards were unstoppable.
Language was essential to the running of the prison. It was used to dehumanise the prisoners in the eyes of the guards and make their brutal work easier. In the communiqués between Duch and the interrogators, the prisoners’ names were often prefixed with ‘contemptible’ or ‘wicked’ and constantly referred to as ‘enemies’. Female prisoners were referred to as female animals, not people. For the most part, the language of the Organisation was abstract and, by extension, so were the prisoners. It was never enough to simply kill the prisoners and the word ‘kill’ was rarely used in documents. ‘Kill’ implied a living being. The enemies of Democratic Kampuchea had to be completely erased. More often the word komtech was used, meaning to ‘smash’ or ‘destroy’.
Like the process of torture and the gathering of confessions, photography was an integral part of identifying enemies and reducing them in the eyes of the Khmer Rouge. Once prisoners were captured in the frame, they were no longer in possession of their lives. The North American Indians, victims of another genocide, believed that the camera could imprison their souls in photographs. For the prisoners at S-21, once they were photographed they could never be anything but guilty–a kind of trial by camera. They had surrendered the last vestige of their individual identities to the Organisation.
The numbers had replaced their names. These numbers were recycled every twelve hours in a constant rotation, a continuous weeding out of enemies. When Prak Khan came for his prisoners he asked at the guard for ‘guilty person number 37, row 12, room 4, building C’. A month later, he could ask for exactly the same digits, but it would be a different prisoner. As in Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the work at S-21 was never-ending.
The majority of the photographs of prisoners were taken at the front of the prison in the wooden sala at the main entrance. Some were taken in the cells or interrogation rooms. Often a projection screen was erected behind the prisoner or they improvised using a hand-held white sheet. Some prisoners were placed in an old colonial-era photographer’s chair used in the past primarily for identification photographs. There was a headrest to keep people steady for long exposures and profile pictures were sometimes taken. The chair still sits in the museum today.
To photograph a person alone, often with a blank backdrop with no context, was further ‘proof’ of their guilt. There was nothing to relate them to and they weren’t part of this world.
As I flicked through the contact sheets at the museum I noticed, almost without exception, that all the photographs of the prisoners were single portraits. Vulnerable and alone, it was as if the act of taking a picture somehow reduced them in size thereby furnishing the idea that they were in the minority.
By contrast, the photographs that survive of the Khmer Rouge identify them as part of a group, like school photographs or members of a team. They all wear Mao caps, they are all in uniform, their kramas are arranged around their necks all in the same fashion. The women all have their hair cut in bobs tied with a single hairpin.
Like the Chinese propaganda imagery of the Cultural Revolution, these were deeply political and moralistic images that reflected an idealised vision of the revolution. They project a stark uniformity of purpose and strength in numbers. In Cambodia, it has always been considered foolish to stand apart from the rest and draw attention to oneself. During the time of the Khmer Rouge it could have fatal consequences. As one staff member later told me, ‘If we didn’t show Duch the proper respect, he might arrest us. He might say we were guilty of being disrespectful.’
Photography for the time of the Khmer Rouge helped reinforce a rigid interpretation of their world. Like a simple mathematical problem, there was only one answer: right or wrong.
In 1944, photographer George Rodger, who had accompanied the allies through Europe during the Second World War, arrived at Belsen concentration camp. As the first photographer there he began taking pictures. After several hours of walking amongst the dead and dying he stopped in his tracks, disgusted. ‘My God,’ he said, ‘what has happened to me?’ He had been wandering around arranging piles of corpses into aesthetic compositions in his viewfinder. Shocked by his own behaviour, he resolved never to photograph another war again.
I remember returning from Cambodia in the early nineties after a trip where I had photographed two soldiers who had suffered a particularly gruesome mine accident. One of them, Hearn Boung, was severely wounded and slipped in and out of consciousness. His body was caked in blood and his left calf had been ripped to shreds by the blast. His foot, however, was still miraculously intact, twisted under his thigh. I took pictures as the nurses began to clean him. Hearn Boung fell into shock and I don’t think he ever had any idea that I was photographing him. Several days later, after his leg was amputated, he died.
Back in Bangkok, I began the process of editing the images I had taken in Cambodia and placing them in slide mounts. It was only when I looked through my loop at Hearn Boung that I began to feel nauseous. It was as if I was observing the scene for the first time. For days I found it difficult to look at the pictures. I realised that I had viewed him at the time as a series of aesthetic and technical calculations and judgements: the correct exposure that I wanted, the angle, the depth of field.
Later, having photographed countless hospital scenes and operations I realised that the camera acted as a kind of shield allowing me to watch the world through the frame of a television set. Very often, if I found something distressing, my reaction was to photograph it, distance it and then I could move on, unless there was something more practical I could do. Photography became a safety net. The camera had acted as a kind of filter for what I was seeing. Like the prisoners of S-21, people had become mere objects in my viewfinder.