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The Lost Executioner: A Story of the Khmer Rouge

by Nic Dunlop

Bloomsbury, $246

For 30 years Cambodians have wondered how their country descended into  a nightmare of violence and death under the Khmer Rouge. When Pol Pot died in 1998, several Cambodians, to my surprise, told me they weren't happy to see the back of Brother No 1 because 'now we will never know why'.

The questions of how and why the Khmer Rouge fratricide occurred have been asked with greater regularity as the UN-backed Khmer Rouge Tribunal compromises its way into reality.

Nic Dunlop, an Irish-born photographer based in Bangkok, documents in plain language his pursuit of Comrade Duch (pronounced Doik), the man in charge of the infamous S-21 torture centre. Better known as Toul Sleng,  the compound that was once a high school in  one of Phnom Penh's wealthier suburbs was transformed into a secret facility where enemies of the Khmer Rouge were tortured before being shipped  to Choung Ek (known to tourists as The Killing Fields) to be 'smashed'.

When the Vietnamese overran Phnom Penh at the end of 1978, Duch disappeared. The photos and skeletons of almost 20,000 people he'd condemned to death were left behind.

During the 1990s Dunlop spent time sifting through the documents the Khmer Rouge abandoned.  His fascination with Duch  led  him to  track down a copy of the only known photograph of the executioner. When he met current or former Khmer Rouge cadres he'd ask about Duch. Eventually, the photographer came face to face with his quarry in a remote village in western Cambodia. Duch had changed his name, found God and had been working  with a US humanitarian organisation.

In The Lost Executioner, Dunlop tells Duch's story. From dedicated student to young revolutionary, through political prisoner to calculating and brutal prison commandant, teacher, aid worker and, finally, in prison again.

Although Duch provides a compelling narrative thread, the book is about more  than just one man. Through Duch's story  and extensive interviews with some of his contemporaries, Dunlop offers some explanation  about how the nightmare was able to happen. It can't  be summed up in a  sentence, but Dunlop suggests that ideology, naive commitment, brutality, desperation, overwhelming fear and irrational paranoia  came together to form the environment in which so many died.

Having unmasked Duch in 1999 (he remains in jail in Phnom Penh today) - and, despite  a strong belief that Cambodia needs those responsible to be tried and to explain their actions -  Dunlop is  pessimistic about the chances for justice being done.  International donors, under the auspices of the UN, have agreed to  give more than US$60 million to Cambodia to run the tribunal. But with most senior Khmer Rouge cadres  living in impunity and only Duch and Ta Mok likely to be tried, the tribunal threaten to be reduced to an expensive farce.



The Lost Executioner: A Story of the Khmer Rouge