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Khmer Rouge Killer Comrade Duch Admits Crimes
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by Rachel Nixon | March 31, 2009 at 09:27 am
146 views | 22 Recommendations | 4 comments
The head of one of the Khmer Rouge's torture centres has admitted responsibility for crimes committed during the regime's four-year rule.
Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Comrade Duch, is on trial before a UN-backed tribunal in Cambodia. He is the first Khmer Rouge leader to face the tribunal; four more senior figures are awaiting justice.
"May I be permitted to apologise to the survivors of the regime, and also the loved ones of those who died brutally during the regime," Duch told the court.
"I ask not that you forgive me now, but hope you will later."
Comrade Duch is unusual among Khmer Rouge leaders in that he had admitted his guilt. Commentators say that his public admission of guilt, broadcast from the courtroom to the nation should carry greater weight with Cambodians.
Of the 14,000 people who passed through prison S-21, which Comrade Duch commanded, only about a dozen are known to have survived. On arrival, all inmates were presumed guilty of opposing Pol Pot's regime, torture and execution were almost inevitable.
Robert Petit, the prosecutor in the case, described how prisoners were "beaten with rattan sticks and whips, electrocuted, had toenails and finger nails pulled out, were suffocated with plastic bags forcibly tied over their heads and were stripped naked and had their genitals electrocuted".
However the 66-year-old said he was only following orders:
Although Duch confessed, he said he was not a decision-maker and described himself as a victim of the regime, maintaining that he was following orders from his superiors and that he and his family would have been killed had he not obeyed.
"I did that because I received orders from Angkar," he said, referring the regime's hidden power center. "Although I knew the orders were criminal, I never dared to question them because it was a life-or-death situation for me and my family."
Under the 1975-79 rule of the ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge, up to two million people are believed to have been executed or died from starvation or overwork.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (4)
at 09:41 on March 31st, 2009
Well, yeah, now that Duch has outlived all of his victims...
at 09:55 on March 31st, 2009
I especially like the fact that he is a 'born again christian". It sounds like the convenient conversion of many criminals. Good point about our old friend Kissinger. I can't see his name without thinking of the Killing Fields.
at 16:41 on March 31st, 2009
It almost sounds to good for not being orchestrated.
He has to serve a life sentence and with hard labour and apologize each and every day before each meal to his victims for the remainder of his life.
at 22:00 on April 26th, 2009
As a survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime, I can't say I'm too enthusiastic about the current tribunal. Trying a handful of surviving Khmer Rouge leaders is unlikely to deliver neither justice nor closure for Cambodians. After all, Pot Pol and many top leaders have already died peacefully in their sleeps. Not on trial are the countless lower level KR cadres who were "just following orders".