Khmer Rouge Leader "Duch" Apologizes to Victims
Leader of S-21 Admits Responsibility for An Estimated 16,000 Deaths
Mar 31, 2009
In this landmark case held no less than nine years after Duch was originally imprisoned, the defendant has expressed "heartfelt sorrow" for presiding over the torture and murder of an estimated 16,000 inmates at the notorious prison camp S-21, according to Tim Johnston in a March 31, 2009 article in the Washington Post.
Duch's apology comes as no surprise. According to Guy Delaney, the BBC's correspondent in Phnom Penh, "The admission of responsibility was dramatic but it was all part of the plan for Comrade Duch's defense team."
Duch's French defense lawyer François Roux, who heads the defense team at the UN-backed hybrid tribunal, had anticipated the apology as far back as last month. “Duch wishes to ask forgiveness from the victims but also from the Cambodian people," said Roux in a February 17, 2009 interview with the BBC. "He will do so publicly. This is the very least he owes the victims."
The Horrors of S-21
Comrade Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, was in charge of the infamous Tuol Sleng prison, where an estimated 16,000 men, women, and children were brutally tortured and killed. Today, only six out of the 16,000 imprisoned at S-21 during the Khmer Rouge's regime are alive. Yet these survivors are willing to talk.
"They beat me with all sorts of instruments, sticks and electric shocks," said Bou Meng in a February 16, 2009 interview with Andrew Buncombe of The Independent. Meng, who will give evidence against Duch during the trial, is a former member of the Khmer Rouge who found himself at Tuol Sleng after being denounced by a friend as a traitor.
The Khmer Rouge, a radical group following Maoist principles, took over Cambodia in 1975 by ousting a US-backed government. Following their leader Pol Pot, the group killed an estimated one-fifth of the nation’s population while attempting to implement an extremist form of agrarian communism.
In addition to forcibly relocating urban dwellers to labor in collective farms, the Khmer Rouge executed anyone suspected to be involved with free-marked ideals, including anyone with an education. According to the prosecutors' indictment, many of those imprisoned in Duch's S-21 were tortured to provide "proof" of counter-revolutionary activity before being executed.
The Other Khmer Rouge Leaders
Duch is only one of four other key members of the Khmer Rouge who have been indicted on crimes against humanity, the others including deputy leader Nuon Chea, president Khieu Samphan, foreign minister Ieng Sary and his wife Ieng Thirith, the group's social affairs minister. Though these senior members of the regime are currently in custody and awaiting trial, all are fighting the charges.
Duch is the only member of the regime who has admitted to and expressed regret over the Khmer Rouge's slaughtering of close to 2 million Cambodians in the late 1970s.
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