Durham; London: Duke University Press, 2016. viii, 350 pp. (B&W photos, illustrations.) US$22.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-8223-6273-9.
Alexander Hinton, an ethnologist specializing in genocide studies at Rutgers, has produced a dense but remarkably accessible narrative of the trial of Kaing Guek Eav (“Duch”), the first of five “most responsible” Khmer Rouge figures to be convicted of crimes committed during the murderous Democratic Kampuchea (Khmer Rouge) regime between 1975 and 1979. The trial, which began in 2009 and was finally concluded in 2012 with a sentence of life imprisonment, has been covered extensively in the media and in some well-researched books and monographs. Rarely, however, has the process been analyzed with such passionate engagement. It follows Why Did They Kill (University of California Press, 2004), written a decade earlier, which was the first serious anthropological analysis of the Khmer Rouge regime.
The book presents a detailed analysis of Duch’s trial by the hybrid Cambodia/UN Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). Duch was not among the top leadership of the murderous Khmer Rouge regime, but he was trusted by the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) to play a major role in the purges of its inner circle from mid-1976 onwards. S-21, housed in a former high school located in Phnom Penh and converted in the 1980s into the Tuol Sleng “Museum of Genocide,” was only one of several “security” (santebal) centres. It was unique, however, in being the final destination of so many senior KR cadres. Duch was a skilled manager and interrogator, who, with his well-trained staff, extracted hundreds of damaging “confessions.” These in turn led to a massive roundup of CPK cadres, accused by the leadership (Angkar) of being collaborators with the erstwhile ally Vietnam, or even of being CIA or KGB agents. We are reminded that, of an estimated 17,000 souls who entered the gates of S-21, barely a half dozen left alive. Duch was alleged to have been a particularly loyal and zealous practitioner, who reported directly to Son Sen, the KR defence minister, and indirectly to the leader, Pol Pot. His defence could only argue that he was just one of many carrying out the orders of Angkar and was a “scapegoat.”
Before and during the trial, Hinton acquainted himself with a large number of court personnel, government officials, lawyers, victims and their families, and other witnesses. He was one of a dozen foreign observers of Cambodia’s painful history, including the journalist Elizabeth Becker, the historian David Chandler, and the author Craig Etcheson, who testified as expert witnesses. He had, himself, done original research in Cambodia for decades and was intimately familiar with the KR period. In his research, he worked closely with Youk Chhang, the respected director of the Cambodian Documentation Centre (DC-Cam), and drew heavily on its resources, largely material left behind at S-21 when the Khmer Rouge was expelled from Phnom Penh by the Vietnamese military in January 1980.
Hinton’s “ethnodrama” of the trial of Duch is largely a chronological account, interspersed with personal commentary and even some poetic interludes that make it anything but a dry academic tome—Hinton suggests it be read as “literature.” Before cracking its pages, the reader is confronted with the cover photo of Duch, a defaced image that hung for a time in the Tuol Sleng Museum, (what is left of S-21) and the provocative title “Man or Monster.” This sets the tone for an extended discussion, begun in the “foreground” chapter, and returned to several times throughout, about the nature of Duch’s crimes and the contradictory facets of his life and character. Duch is an “intellectual,” of the kind that was largely targeted by the regime for “smashing,” but he is also a loyal, even fervent, member of the party. As he sees more and more of his former CPK colleagues enter the institution under his authority, however, he begins to wonder when his own time will come. We can surmise that he was probably saved by the Vietnamese occupation of Phnom Penh in January 1980.
The book is divided into two main sections, “confession” and “reconstruction,” and quotes extensively from direct testimony by Duch himself, surviving staff of S-21 and, finally, some of the few surviving victims or their family members. There is also a huge trove of documentary and photographic material, mainly from the DC-Cam archives, some of which bears the notations and even the signature of Duch. Particularly damning are the testimonies of three surviving “trustees” of S-21, the artist Vann Nath, the author Bou Meng, and the mechanic Chum Mey. Vann Nath’s haunting paintings of scenes of torture from S-21, as well as sketches by Chum Mey, done long after their incarceration, have been displayed in the museum for thirty years and were entered into evidence at the trial.
Hinton, even in his concluding chapter, never definitively answers the paradoxical question of how this inoffensive mathematics teacher, an early convert to Khmer-style Communism, and, latterly, a born-again Christian, somehow found his way into the role of chief torturer at S-21. One clue lies in Duch’s previous role as director of Camp M-13 during the civil conflict that preceded the KR’s assumption of power, graphically described in the French ethnographer François Bizot’s memoir The Gate (Le Portail) (translation Harvill, 2002). It is here that he seems to have learned the fine art of interrogating “enemies.” Having heard all the evidence, an initial guilty plea, a late reversal by the defence to plead for his release, a conviction, and sentence (thirty-five years, changed on appeal to life), we are quite deliberately left to draw our own conclusions. To his credit, Hinton alludes only briefly to accusations of political meddling and/or judicial corruption, but passes no judgment. Man or Monster is unique in its appeal both to students of post-conflict socio-political issues and to the general reader, and is a major contribution to genocide studies.
D. Gordon Longmuir
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
pp. 857-858