khmer sources

Photographs by Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum
"I worry I will not have the strength to be a witness at the future Khmer Rouge Trials," says former S-21 prisoner and artist Vann Nath. "My health worsens from one day to the next and it will not improve," Vann says. He fears he won’t live to see the perpetrators of the Regime punished for their crimes.

Vann Nath, 61, survived 12 months in Phnom Penh’s notorious Tuol Sleng prison, painting pictures of gruesome torture methods his Khmer Rouge interrogators used. Every day at S-21 I watched and recorded Pol Pot’s soldiers torturing prisoners."

Vann’s story has subsequently been made into a film and is shown daily at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. A book—A Cambodian Prison Portrait: One Year in the Khmer Rouge’s S-21—has also been published. "Because of my failing health I am unable to get out much and meet people anymore, and I don’t have the time with all the hospital appointments I have to keep; I go twice weekly to have my blood purified," he says.

"But I have been following the Government’s progress in getting the Khmer Rouge Trials underway. I anxiously await justice, as I am sure most Cambodian people do, and I hope the victims of the Regime will have professional lawyers, particularly as the court will be in the international spotlight."The Trials have been delayed for a very long time and I think this is partly because of the position many current high-ranking officials have found themselves in, especially because of the relationships some of them had with the leader Pol Pot.
His face saddens when he remembers the past. "I always try not to think back, but when we talk about it, it seems it is happening to me again today. Perhaps tonight I will dream about that time again, back when I was a prisoner at S-21, and I will feel that same fear all over.

"When I eat lunch now or drink water, I vividly remember the times when I had very little of either. I remember my legs shackled and being thirsty. What I also recall from those times are those who were cruel and those who were less so.

"Now it is very difficult for me to believe in the goodness of people. I suppose you could say I have lost confidence." Vann takes a deep breath and continues. "It was horrible to see Khmer people treating their own like that … We didn’t know where to go, so we kept quiet and waited for the day we would be taken and killed.

"When I was arrested I never knew the exact reasons why the Khmer Rouge detained me. It was a vague accusation, something about violating the moral code of the Angka.

"I did know that from my village in Battambang province, they arrested people every day. Each month they would arrest many people and drag these villagers away with their hands tied behind their backs and a long piece of bamboo threaded through to make movement impossible. Everybody was blindfolded. They were then taken away and killed.

"Many people had fled from Svay Rieng, Prey Veng and Pursat, thinking they would be safer in Battambang. This was not the case. They were arrested and transported to Phnom Penh.

"I was detained on December 30, 1977, in Samrong (Battambang province) pagoda one night. They kept me in another pagoda for a week, and then, on January 7, 1978, at 10 a.m. they called my name. Along with 35 others, I was ordered into a car. I thought we would be driven immediately to our deaths but instead we traveled to Phnom Penh and were taken to S-21. I considered myself lucky.

"It was very fortunate I was held there, and as the director of S-21 Duch knew I was an artist, he ordered I paint from a photograph as a test. When they realized I could in fact paint they locked me in my cell, but removed the handcuffs."
Vann thinks he painted at least 1,000 paintings during his incarceration at S-21, including portraits of Pol Pot.

"While I was held in S-21, I held no hope of ever seeing my family again," he says. "My two first-born sons died of starvation in Battambang; there was no food or medicine to save them." Vann and his wife, whom he married in 1971, had three more children after he was released from prison.

"When Pol Pot was defeated, people were very happy, but even for all that outward happiness, the cruelties of those years were not forgotten by any means."

"Pol Pot destroyed this country leaving a terrible legacy. There is still a great deal of violence in Cambodia, 15-year-old boys kill people; wives kill husbands; fathers kill sons. This is the heritage that Pol Pot left for us … we still have a long way to recuperate."