Khmer Rouge’s chief jailer and war criminal dies at 77
PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA — TheKhmerRouge’schiefjailer, who admitted overseeing the torture andkillingsof asmany as 16,000 Cambodians while running the regime’s most notorious prison, has died. Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, was 77 and had been serving a life prison term for warcrimesandcrimes against humanity.
He died at a hospital in Cambodia early Wednesday morning, said Neth Pheaktra, a spokesperson for the tribunal in Phnom Penh that handled the trials over the regime’s crimes.
Duchwas admitted toCambodianSoviet FriendshipHospital after developing difficulty breathing Monday at the Kandal provincial prison, said Chat Sineang, chief of the prisonwhere Duch had been transferred from the tribunal’s prison facility in 2013. Headdedthat thebodywould be examined for a cause of death before being handed to his family.
Duch, whosetrialtookplace in 2009, was the first senior Khmer Rouge figure to face the U.N.-backed tribunal that hadbeenassembled to deliver justice for the regime’s brutal rule in the late 1970s, which is blamed for the deaths of 1.7 million people — a quarter of Cambodia’s population at the time.
The communist Khmer Rouge regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975-79 was accused of genocide for causing the deaths of so many of their countrymen from executions, starvation and lack of medical care due to its radical policies. Only after neighboring Vietnam pushed the KhmerRouge frompower did the scaleandbarbarityoftheir rule become absolutely clear.
Ascommanderofthetop-secret Tuol Sleng prison codenamed S-21, Duch was one of the fewex-KhmerRougewho acknowledged even partial responsibility for his actions, and his trial included his own wrenchinglygraphictestimony ofhowpeopleweretorturedat the prison. The site inPhnom Penhwhichhadbeenasecondary school before the Khmer Rouge came to power, is now amuseum with stunning evidenceofthecrueltywithwhich the KhmerRouge persecuted even its own members they accused of disloyalty.
Men, women and children seen as enemies of the regime or who disobeyed its orders were jailed and tormented there, and only a handful survived.
“Everyonewhowasarrested andsent toS-21waspresumed dead already,” he testified in April 2009.
The tribunal since Duch’s trial has convicted two top echelonKhmerRougeleaders, while two other defendants died before their trials could be completed. The regime’s No. 2 leader Nuon Chea died duringhisappealsprocess. The tribunal, established in 2004 by an agreement between the U.N. and the Cambodian government, has cost more than
$360 million.
The other whose appeal is under consideration, former head of state Khieu Samphan, almost certainly will be the last one to face trial, due to the Cambodian government’s opposition toanymoreprosecutions. ThetopKhmerRouge leader, PolPot, died in 1998 as a prisoner of his comrades in what had shrunk to a spent forceofjungle-basedguerrillas.
Youk Chhang, head of the DocumentationCenterofCambodia, which has collected voluminous archives about the country’s tragedy, said Duch’s death “is a reminder to us all to remember the victims of theKhmerRouge. And that justice remains a difficult road for Cambodia.”
Torturers under Duch beat and whipped prisoners and shocked them with electrical devices, Duch admitted to the court, but still he denied accounts from survivors and other trial witnesses that he tookpart intortureandexecutions himself. The offspring of detaineeswerekilledtoensure the next generation could not take vengeance. Duch called himself “criminally responsible” for babies’ deaths but blamed his subordinates for battering the young bodies against trees.