DUCH IS NOT SINCERE

Kok-Thay ENG

Deputy Director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia

August 13, 2009



I would like to write a letter in response to Dr. Peg LeVine's article on "Duch, Detachment, and the Insertion of Meaning at the ECCC" on August 12. I value and admire Dr. LeVine's analysis as a trauma and clinical psychologist for going into such depth and detail about Duch's testimony, his state of mind, moral issues around Duch's act and post-atrocity contemplation. But what does it mean for such analysis to the Cambodian society today? It means very little to the people. What they want to see is justice and a more serious contrition from the person who was responsible for the most notorious prison in Cambodian history in which many thousands of people were tortured, starved and killed in seemingly sadistic manners. If one looks at Tuol Sleng today, seeing the photographs, the cells, the torture equipments, the number of mass graves at Cheung Ek where people from Tuol Sleng were executed, the handwriting of the victims in their forced confessions and the photographs of children and their mothers, one can feel the unbelievable extent of what happened there. On the other hand, if one also looks at the handwritings of Duch giving orders to torture and kill, photographs of S-21 staff in meetings, dining hall, training sessions, looking so resolute and proud for what they were doing, one can only imagine two things today: that Duch be justly punished for what happened in that institution and that a more sincere-looking and sober remorse be displayed from him.



Duch's remorse seems questionable. In Khmer sensitivities, a remorseful person should look down and speak softly to whoever listening to him. He should not have the face to be overly confident, raise his hand and voice and lecturing the court, although he had to speak somehow. At the same time as talking about remorse, Duch still looks to be proud for being patriotic for his country, for obeying his supervisors and serving the revolution so well (yet he said he was not doing it for the revolution, he was protecting himself and family), for being honest and loyal to his superiors which is a tendency in patron-client relationship in Khmer culture. In some situations, Duch also looks to be an angry man, angry at people and the society, almost like the kind of anger that can enable him to oversee the torture and killing of many people. This is not the behavior of a deeply remorseful person.



What would one have done if he/she oversaw that prison in the way Duch had the opportunity to do? The answer is simple, one does not need to put himself in a life and death dilemma situation to answer this question and one does not need to put himself in Duch's shoes to answer the question. The Khmer Rouge would not ask anyone to lead that kind of institution. It perhaps requires a "trait" for someone to be able to detach so well (as to be able to stay and work in that dreadful place for years), to torture, to hurt and to kill. It requires someone to be diligent with details, meticulous and calculated. It also requires someone to be honest, sincere and unswervingly dedicative to the revolution. It is probably safe to say that the persons who were not fit enough to be at Tuol Sleng would be reassigned or executed for making mistakes.



The film "The Reader" can be of some interest in our case here. Hannah Schmidt was imprisoned for many years and on the day of her release, she killed herself. What one should feel at the end of the film is a sense of being able to deliver forgiveness to her because Hannah Schmidt believed that after causing the death of three hundred women only imprisonment and her own death can probably pay for the death of Jewish women died under her watch. Her remorse looks most sincere.



END.

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Psychosocial of Duch

By Peg LeVine

August 12, 2009



On 6 August, during Professor David Chandler's testimony at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, he was invited to speak on the character of the defendant Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, the former commander of S-21, the Khmer Rouge torture-execution center. Professor Chandler described Duch as being "enthusiastic" about his work.



While attending this full-day-session at the ECCC, I studied Duch as Dr Chandler spoke. I drew on my background as a clinical and trauma psychologist. I listened and watched from both microscopic and wide-angle lenses, particularly as Duch gave his closing remarks. At that time, I tried not to overhear an American woman sitting behind me saying she was "disgusted" by Duch's lack of remorse. The next day, I tried to comprehend the timing of a forwarded email by DC-Cam to me where Duch was described as a "monster" by an academic.



I write here to address three issues embedded in my observations of Duch and witnesses on Aug 6 and 7.



As a first issue, there is an ongoing inquiry into witness and defendant reliability of testimony. In this regard, I note that the term "trustworthiness" is the equivalent used in qualitative research and is associated with methods that measure the role that context plays on memory and recall. For example, if someone is in an anxiety-provoking context, she or he may over or under attend to detail, in ways that can be documented. Such questions on reliability were raised during Dr Candler's testimony.



To put things simply, there are two extreme cohorts here, of whom Duch is one. On one hand, we have the witnesses who were of vulnerable ages when abruptly displaced from known reality, traditional spirit protective practices, and secure family niches alongside safe touch.



Evidence of their extreme trauma is embedded in the fact that they don't get all the facts right. In my own 10 years of research on weddings and births during the Khmer Rouge regime and the breakdown of traditional ritual by Democratic Kampuchea, I had to devise reliable, qualitative methods that could track the changing stories by survivors rather than dismissing them as being unreliable.



And on the other hand, we have those like Duch whose extreme capacity to recall details with keen accuracy makes him seem less real (more manipulative) to the viewers. But this process too is evidence. The hand movements, voice tone, capacity to sit without speaking for hours at a time are artifacts, perhaps, of extreme revolutionary "cult" experiences.



As a related example, I returned several times to watch the interrogators' re-enactments in Rithy Panh's film on S-21. To the average observer, such activities and compulsive movement appear inhumane, evil-minded. But I wish that it were so simple.



From the perspective of traumatic studies, calculated and repetitive movements can be evidence of a trauma disorder that falls on the spectrum of "dissociation"—where the human psyche and body can no longer stay in time and place (as in the witnesses cases)—or when the psyche and body stay too long in the same time and place (as in the cases of former soldiers in Mr Panh's re-enactment scenes).



In closing, I pose a few questions for contemplation. What meanings do we lose when we insert meaning or leading questions?



For example, is Duch remorseful? Well remorse is a state, not a trait. So sometimes, perhaps, he is; and sometimes, perhaps, he is not. This is the nature of state over trait.



What I saw via my lens as a trauma specialist was a man who remains a revolutionary – but one who has a unique capacity to detach. By observing how and when someone like Duch detaches, we may gain a fuller understanding of the phenomenon of "destructive fanaticism." In my research, I studied Khmer Rouge processes that mimic extreme "cultism".



I studied what happens when traditional Cambodian rituals and practices are eroded and replaced by others' practices, and how anxieties are managed in this regard (with a note that sitting in an unmoving way is a repetitive act of being still). I did not watch Duch by inserting an agenda or by judging him in any way. I just watched.



And in this regard, I remain curious about his unusual capacity "to hold ground" alongside his capacity "to relinquish."



I walked away from the court pondering whether his rather recent adoption of Christianity is about something else (despite some who may see this as his path to remorse). There is something embedded in the way Duch has relinquished (again) his indigenous roots to take up another "higher order" that seems eerie, telling. What might be known if "process" notes of such latitude were weighed alongside the current focus on "content" notes as evidence is being gathered?



Dr Peg LeVine is Professor of Psychosocial Health in Asia at the Monash Asia Institute, Melbourne, Australia . LeVine's latest book "Love and Dread in Cambodia : Weddings and Birth (Ritual Loss) Under the Khmer Rouge" (NUS Press) will be released next month.) Reprint with the permission from the author.