The Lost Executioner

By Nic Dunlop

Tuol Svay Prey, the district in Phnom Penh where the prison is located, roughly translates as “The Hill of the Poison Fruit Tree” Tuol means hillock. Sleng is also the name of a tree with extremely poisonous fruit.[i]

In this incredible book, author Nic Dunlop takes readers on an amazing journey through Cambodia, with his near-obsessed effort to track down Commandant Duch as the storyline that sheds ample light on the country’s history of genocide.

Dunlop had a picture of Commandant Duch in his back pocket throughout the decade-plus investigation in Cambodia.  In the beginning, he only knew that Duch was the commandant of Tuol Sleng, the infamous S-21 where countless Cambodians were interrogated, tortured and eventually mass murdered under the reign of the Khmer Rouge.  In his capacity as a photo-journalist, Dunlop ventured deep into Cambodia’s rural areas, including the former strongholds of the Khmer Rouge, Duch’s home town and the border refugee camps, to interview valuable sources for information that eventually led him to Duch and his confession.

Dunlop had one purpose, and that was to seek justice for the innocent lives that were reduced into the mountain of screaming souls[ii] that is hauntingly on display at the S-21 Museum.  While the Cambodian genocide is generally known to the world now, little was done (even at the time of publication) in bringing those that were responsible for the atrocity to justice. [iii]  To Dunlop, letting history be the judge was not good enough.  He wanted to expose Duch for justice.  He wanted to learn why the atrocities happened, as it was important to learn how it happened.

As the reader, however, I felt very satisfied reading this book exactly because it is part of what will let history be the final judge of the atrocities.  The author has explained so much more about the Cambodian genocide to me than my cursory visit at S-21.  For example, most of those who were brought to S-21 were cadres themselves.  The role of S-21 in the Khmer Rouge regime was to seek out and extinguish spies within the Party.  The deadly purges effectuated a pervasive regime of fear that was, and perhaps still is, a hallmark of Communism.

Furthermore, this book has provided the perspectives of the Cambodians who lived through and survived the genocide.  There was a good friend Sokheang, who decided to return to Cambodia from his studies in France in the 1970s out of patriotism and a genuine belief in Communism.  His regret in life was the influence he had on dozens of friends who joined the Khmer Rouge with the same idealism and ended up dead.

What was emotionally difficult for me as a reader was to see the human face of Duch that Dunlop so faithfully depicted as a journalist.  Surely, Duch was a demon who crafted interrogation and torture techniques for the S-21, but was he not also a loving husband and father?  Was his turn to Christianity a genuine act of remorse?  Did his excellent service at the border refugee camp as an aid worker, having saved many lives there, absolve him of his crime?

Finally, the book has also raised many difficult moral questions about Duch’s individual responsibility in the genocide.  Would history accept the fact that he was ordered to commit mass murders?  Would history accept the argument of duress, that if he had not followed the order, it would mean death for himself?

Nic Dunlop’s compassion for the Cambodian society came through loud and clear in this haunting account of the country’s traumatic past.  In the final pages of the book, Dunlop seems to express a certain sense of disillusionment, “as I took pictures of the pictures at the museum, I realized I was participating in another person’s sufferings and vulnerability and exploiting their memory still further and for much more nebulous reasons.”  While I appreciate his reflective self-criticism, I respectfully disagree.  This book has allowed me to empathize much more than when I was seeing those pictures at S-21 as a tourist, for Dunlop has given these faces the context of their sufferings.

[i] The Lost Executioner, at 19.

[ii] I am not the originator of this phrase, but I forgot which book it came from.  I am referring to the stacks of skulls that were on display at the S-21 when I last visited in 2009.

[iii]  For the trials of the Cambodian genocide, see Wikipedia entry here.