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10/29/2007 04:52:42 PM · #1 |
...you were in the same situation.
Read the details, then ask yourself the question.
Place= Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Time= Oct. 25th, Mid 1970's
Photo's
Interview
He had a job to do, and he did it supremely well, under threat of death, within earshot of screams of torture: methodically photographing Khmer Rouge prisoners and producing a haunting collection of mug shots that has become the visual symbol of Cambodiaâs mass killings.
âIâm just a photographer; I donât know anything,â he said he told the newly arrived prisoners as he removed their blindfolds and adjusted the angles of their heads. But he knew, as they did not, that every one of them would be killed.
âI had my job, and I had to take care of my job,â he said in a recent interview. âEach of us had our own responsibilities. I wasnât allowed to speak with prisoners.â
That was three decades ago, when the photographer, Nhem En, now 47, was on the staff of Tuol Sleng prison, the most notorious torture house of the Khmer Rouge regime, which caused the deaths of 1.7 million people from 1975 to 1979.
This week he was called to be a witness at a coming trial of Khmer Rouge leaders, including his commandant at the prison, Kaing Geuk Eav, known as Duch, who has been arrested and charged with crimes against humanity.
The trial is still months away, but prosecutors are interviewing witnesses, reviewing tens of thousands of pages of documents and making arrests.
As a lower-ranking cadre at the time, Mr. Nhem En is not in jeopardy of arrest. But he is in a position to offer some of the most personal testimony at the trial about the man he worked under for three years.
In the interview, Mr. Nhem En spoke with pride of living up to the exacting standards of a boss who was a master of negative reinforcement.
âIt was really hard, my job,â he said. âI had to clean, develop and dry the pictures on my own and take them to Duch by my own hand. I couldnât make a mistake. If one of the pictures was lost I would be killed.â
But he said: âDuch liked me because Iâm clean and Iâm organized. He gave me a Rolex watch.â
Fleeing with other Khmer Rouge cadres when the government was ousted by a Vietnamese invasion in 1979, Mr. Nhem En said he traded that watch for 20 tins of milled rice.
Since then he has adapted and prospered and is now a deputy mayor of the former Khmer Rouge stronghold Anlong Veng. He has switched from an opposition party to the party of Prime Minister Hun Sen, and today he wears a wristwatch that bears twin portraits of the prime minister and his wife, Bun Rany.
Last month an international tribunal arrested and charged a second Khmer Rouge figure, who is now being held with Duch in a detention center. He is Nuon Chea, 82, the movementâs chief ideologue and a right-hand man to the Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, who died in 1998.
Three more leaders were expected to be arrested in the coming weeks: the urbane former Khmer Rouge head of state, Khieu Samphan, along with the former foreign minister, Ieng Sary, and his wife and fellow central committee member, Ieng Thirith.
All will benefit from the caprice of Mr. Nuon Chea, who complained that the squat toilet in his cell was hurting his ailing knees and was given a sit-down toilet.
Similar toilets are being installed in the other cells, said a tribunal spokesman, Reach Sambath, âSo they will all enjoy high-standard toilets when they come.â
It is not clear whether any of the cases will be combined. But even if the defendants do not see one another, their testimony, harmonious or discordant, will put on display the relationships of some of the people who once ran the countryâs killing machine.
In a 1999 interview, Duch implicated his fellow prisoner, Mr. Nuon Chea, in the killings, citing among other things a directive that said, âKill them all.â
Mr. Nhem Enâs career in the Khmer Rouge began in 1970 at age 9 when he was recruited as a village boy to be a drummer in a touring revolutionary band. When he was 16, he said, he was sent to China for a seven-month course in photography.
He became the chief of six photographers at Tuol Sleng, where at least 14,000 people were tortured to death or sent to killing fields. Only a half dozen inmates were known to have survived.
He was a craftsman, and some of his portraits, carefully posed and lighted, have found their way into art galleries in the United States.
Hundreds of them hang in rows on the walls of Tuol Sleng, which is now a museum, their fixed stares tempting a visitor to search for meaning here on the cusp of death. In fact, they are staring at Mr. Nhem En.
The job was a daily grind, he said: up at 6:30 a.m., a quick communal meal of bread or rice and something sweet, and at his post by 7 a.m. to wait for prisoners to arrive. His telephone would ring to announce them: sometimes one, sometimes a group, sometimes truckloads of them, he said.
âThey came in blindfolded, and I had to untie the cloth,â he said.
âI was alone in the room, so I am the one they saw. They would say, âWhy was I brought here? What am I accused of? What did I do wrong?ââ
But Mr. Nhem En ignored them.
ââLook straight ahead. Donât lean your head to the left or the right.â Thatâs all I said,â he recalled. âI had to say that so the picture would turn out well. Then they were taken to the interrogation center. The duty of the photographer was just to take the picture.â
What would you do?
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10/29/2007 05:42:38 PM · #2 |
I was in Cambodia in March and visited the Killing Fields and the Tuol Sleng museum. They were both very sobering experiences and make you appreciate how much we really have. Our guide had experienced first hand the mass killings as many of his family and relatives were killed.
To answer your question, what would I have done if I were the photographer in the 1970's in Phnom Penh? The exact same thing. Had he not followed orders, he would have been killed as well. It is very easy to judge past events using todays standards, but based on my experience in Phnom Penh, and after having listened to the stories first hand, I know that there was no choice to be made.
A few pictures from my visit.
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10/29/2007 05:57:01 PM · #3 |
What would I do?
The same thing friends of mine had to do.....to not be court-martialed and/or executed for disobeying orders
The things that still after decades make them wake up from nightmares in a cold sweat because they will carry their memories of their own personal Hell with them for the rest of their lives.
I pray to this day for relief for these people who will never get it.
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10/30/2007 06:51:48 AM · #4 |
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10/30/2007 07:39:32 AM · #5 |
I commend the photographer for having the fortitude to do the job he was assigned, in order to survive thru the ordeal. I think that he knew that he was creating a body of work which would be a physical connection to the horrendous time and place for future generations to have as a reminder of how brutal humans can become if given too much power. Don't think that it can never happen again somewhere on the planet, but at least the photos are a shocking reminder that each of the skulls in the piles was once a living human being.
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10/30/2007 11:02:12 PM · #6 |
In my opinion.
It is true that he was 9 years old when he was recruited. Brain washing is easy at that age.
Being sent off to China to learn photography as a teen, only to return to do mug shots of prisoners.
A child non the less among a hellish existence, but, if he had a conscious at all, a tad of humanitarianism, couldn't he somehow tried to save at least one person.
What crime did an infant do? Many were slaughtered during the regimes power.
Stepping from the camera to see the reality of his subject, instead of the subject as a source of survival for him self.
The threat of death is strong when survival instincts kick in.
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