'I oversaw deaths of thousands'

2008-02-11 19:19

London - A former senior Khmer Rouge official said in an interview with a British newspaper published on Monday that he had "no alternative" when he oversaw the killing of thousands of Cambodians.

The regime's prison chief Duch, who was arrested last July and has been charged with crimes against humanity, told the Independent daily newspaper how those who came to a camp of which he was in charge had no way to avoid death.

"There was a widespread and tacit understanding. I and everyone else who worked in that place knew that anyone who entered had to be psychologically demolished, eliminated by steady work, given no way out," he told the paper.

16 000 tortured, killed

"No answer could avoid death. Nobody who came to us had any chance of saving himself," added the former Khmer Rouge official, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav.

Up to two million people died of starvation and overwork or were executed under the communist Khmer Rouge, which abolished religion, schools and currency during the regime's 1975-'79 rule.

Duch, who is awaiting trial before a United Nations-backed tribunal, allegedly oversaw the torture and extermination of 16 000 men, women and children at the Khmer Rouge's Tuol Sleng Prison, codenamed S-21.

He told the Independent that the torture centre, a former school, was set up in August 1975, four months after the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh, and work began there two months later.

"When the work started at Tuol Sleng, I asked my bosses now and then, 'Do we really have to use all this violence?' Son Sen (defence minister) never answered. Nuon Chea, the No 2 Brother in the power structure, who was above him, told me: 'Don't think about these things.' 

"I personally had no answer. Then, with the passing of time, I understood. It was Ta Mok who had ordered all the prisoners to be eliminated. We saw enemies, enemies, enemies everywhere.

'Interrogate them again'

"I was cornered, like everyone in that machine, I had no alternative.

"Pol Pot, the No 1 Brother, said you always had to be suspicious, to fear something. And thus the usual request came: interrogate them again, interrogate them better."

Earlier this month, survivors of the Khmer Rouge publicly confronted the regime's "Brother No 2," Nuon Chea, at a UN-backed genocide tribunal, marking the first time victims have faced a senior cadre in court.

- AFP