The Master of Confessions (38 page)
Read The Master of Confessions Online
Authors: Thierry Cruvellier
Duch said what needed to be said, argues Roux, even if he didn't say everything.
Ms. Studzinsky tried to learn more. We were unable to do so. Is it that this trial has turned into one of evasion? I guess so. When we spoke of Phung Ton, you saw the emotions it triggered in Mam Nai as well as in Duch. What's at stake here? I don't know any more than you do. I am only describing what I see. So, yes, there's no doubt that gray areas remain. No doubt there remain things that are hard to admit. But so it is.
IN HIS GRIPPING PLAY
INCENDIES,
one of Wajdi Mouawad's characters hides his criminal past from his family. The playwright gives his character this line of terrible, simple veracity: “Why didn't I tell you? Some truths can only be revealed provided they have been discovered.”
At this stage, François Roux appears to be succeeding in his effort to make the court forget about Kar Savuth. A good lawyer knows how to spin a story without appearing to; he knows how to weave, from scattered, flimsy scraps of information, a thread that appears as strong as one of those climbing ropes with which you can confidently rappel down a cliff. The master deftly and boldly strings together documents and quotes to forge a harmoniously structured argument, rich in substance.
Duch never takes his eyes off him. He removes his interpreter's headset, leans forward, and listens closely in that language spoken by so many Party intellectuals: French. The lawyer raises his voice to show his indignation at the proposition that Duch had access to the secrets kept by the Party's highest-ranked leaders; his voice is strident when he defies anyone to claim that one could disobey the Big Brothers; then, as he explains that there was no loophole, no way out of the endless cycle of death decreed from on high, his tone drops to one of great weariness.
The master mentions his own broken dreams. He tells of his dashed hope that the office of the prosecution would pursue a dialogue with the only major Khmer Rouge cadre to have accepted responsibility for his crime. Roux had dreamed of a prosecutor who would rather outdo himself than give in to public opinion. He denounces the “conventional, traditional argument whose underlying philosophy is âThis man is a monster.'”
Members of the prosecution, yesterday you vehemently spoke out against a man who was on his knees begging for forgiveness. I do not like this. I do not like the tone of your statements or of your arguments. A scapegoat is one on whose head all the evils, all the sufferings of a society are loaded. Among the Hebrews, the goat was sent into the desert so that society could redeem itself by saying, “This goat bears all our wrongdoings.” That is a scapegoat. Duch does not have to bear all the horrors of the Cambodian tragedy. No, Duch is not the person described to you by the prosecutors.
During a pause in proceedings, Nic Dunlop turns to me with a mischievous look in his eye and says, “I've never heard such an eloquent âfuck you' before.”
The master continues his argument. He talks about the crime of obedience, and its twin, the crime of submission. Roux had naively hoped that he and the prosecution would steer the trial toward the same destination, the one that François Bizot set forth during the opening of the trial and which David Chandler defined in the conclusion of his work: namely, that to understand S-21, we needn't look further than ourselves.
Are we just going to rehash the same old arguments before this court? “He committed crimes, so therefore he must be convicted and society will be better for it.” Or even worse: “This will not happen again.” Well, let me tell you: it will happen again, as long as we avoid looking with clear eyes at the phenomenon that turns a normal man into a torturer and executioner. This phenomenon, this crime of obedience, is exactly the subject that Chandler so courageously tackled.
For thirty-five years, I have been hearing about this experiment, this terrible experiment where they took ordinary American citizens just like you and me, put them in a room, and said, “You see, behind the glass pane, the person sitting there in that chair? He's lying. He has electrodes on him and you have a button. Each time you ask him a question and he lies, send him a jolt.” There's an instructor wearing a white coat next to you, telling you, “It's okay, go ahead.” Sixty percent of the peopleâpeople just like you and meâobeyed the person in the white coat and kept pressing the button until they reached the lethal dose. The person on the other side of the glass pane was only an actor playing the role of the victim. What a terrifying experiment. I have heard people here in this room tell the court, “I can't answer that, I have to go and check with my superior.” Yes indeed, that is how we all function.
THE END OF A TRIAL
is like the end of captivity. What has taken monthsâyears, evenâall those depositions, testimonies, facts, documents, experts, and pleasâevaporates and is forgotten behind the one and only thing that everyone will remember, and which erases everything else: the verdict.
“So, we come to the sentence,” says the master quietly, in a silence so intense that when he rustles the page in front of him, it sounds like a judas hole being slammed shut.
Previously, Ouk Ket's widow had suggested, with bitter sarcasm, that Duch should be condemned to working as a groundskeeper on the killing fields of Choeung Ek, which, she indignantly pointed out, were haphazardly maintained at best. The master, a little carried away, now allows himself to make a similarly coarse statement. Like a climber carefully testing where he places his foot, he suggests that Duch ought to be condemned to giving guided tours of the scenes of his crimes, to show “younger generations what should not be done.” To plead in court means to sometimes risk going too far.
It is time to reach a conclusion.
It's always a difficult moment for a lawyer because he knows he can say no more after this, so he asks himself, “Have I said everything that needed to be said? Have I done enough?” Duch, all your victims were your brothers and sisters in humanity. You said that you were a coward and that you did not go to see them while they were in detention. In the eyes of humanity, you will never be absolved of these crimes, and the gazes of those you did not wish to meet will follow you forever. But what about us, Your Honors? Are we prepared to look Duch in the eye and see him as our fellow human? And will you, by your decision, bring Duch back to humanity? For quite some time now, lawyers across the world have argued that one of the goals of sentencing is to rehabilitate the guilty party. But is rehabilitation forbidden in the context of a crime against humanity?
A final word: Duch is dead. Today, his name is Kaing Guek Eav.
And with that, Roux takes his seat as slowly as he stood a few hours earlier before the curious crowd; he moves as though he were in the twilight years of life.
E
LOQUENCE IS LIKE A BUTTERFLYâITS LIFE SPAN IS EPHEMERAL.
Now that Roux is back in his seat, the lawyers for the victims and the prosecutors are determined not to let things stand as they are. For the past twenty-four hours, they've watched, goggle-eyed, as the defense team imploded. Now it's time to sound the horn for the final assault. Mr. Sur has already returned to France, but Mr. Khan seizes the moment to salvage his reputation. He is the first to pounce on the opportunity presented by the unbelievable discord among his opponents:
The defense is putting forward two completely different positions. This is wrong. It is unfair to the people of Cambodia, it is unfair to the victims, and it is unfair to Your Honors' search for the truth. Instead of responding to the views, the concerns, the pain, and the plight of the civil parties, the accused embarked upon what I call a carefully constructed, paragraph-by-paragraph, footnote-by-footnote statement. Thirty years after the events, our civil parties want the truth, they want their lives back, they want some kind of closure, and it is simply unacceptable that we are left in this chaotic state of affairs where we do not know actually what has been said. Mr. Roux states that the accused is not pleading guilty but he is accepting contrition. His Cambodian lawyer says, “Release him, he's absolutely not guilty.” This is a unique case that can be described by many adjectives, but I'll simply say [that it is] highly unacceptable and absolutely avoidable.
Silke Studzinsky sees the defense team's implosion as a slap in the face to the victims:
After the accused and his defense tried to convince the civil parties that his partial admission amounts to a truthful, sincere, and genuine confession, the civil parties now became even more convinced beyond any doubt that the accused was and is playing a game, and that at the very least the time has come to shed the sheep's clothing. The civil parties who are seeking justice and truth are further alienated and more offended as the credibility of the accused is once again more corroded. His wish and demand to return to Cambodian society must be rejected.
The lawyer Hong Kim Suon, another of the victims' lawyers, begins by saying that he's deeply saddened by the defendant's about-face. Within a few seconds, however, he's in tears, quite overwhelmed by the pressure of the event. Throughout the trial, Duch had accorded this lawyer a special, almost fraternal, form of respect. Now he gives him no more attention than he does the others. At this point, Duch has started breaking away from the society to which he had hoped to be reinstated. In one of the interviews he gave to filmmaker Rithy Panh a few months prior to the start of the trial, he had a terrible intuition: “The day I am forgiven, I will prostrate myself in gratitude. If I am not forgiven, well then, let's leave it at that and wait for life to end.” As his trial reaches its conclusion, Duch realizes that he is not going to get the forgiveness he had hoped for, and so withdraws into himself. He turns away from others. The previous evening, after Kar Savuth's bombshell, Roux had naturally asked to see the defendant. But Duch sent word through the prison warden that he was too tired. Just as he once avoided visiting his friends about to be killed at S-21, Duch now avoids a meeting that would bring him face-to-face with yet another betrayal.
THOSE ON THE OFFENSIVE
are always more brazen than those in retreat. The prosecutor doesn't miss this undreamed-of occasion to rip into an opponent who has dominated him from start to finish over the course of the trial. He also uses the opportunity to justify his own intransigence.
“What has happened in this trial is that the prosecution, the civil parties have been grossly misled by the defense,” proclaims the Australian prosecutor.
They have been saying throughout this case that certainly they would not be asking for an acquittal; and that's what they've done yesterday. That's loud and clear. Now, if that's the case, he should get noânoâmitigating factors in relation to his sentence, none at all, because that's not cooperation at all. So that's the assumption that we make, but I have a feeling that that's not the case. I have a feeling that counsel have acted without instructions and I think this needs to be resolved before we leave the courtroom. It's very, very unclear what the defense are, in fact, doing, but one thing that is clear is that from that defense yesterday, they asked for an acquittal of this accused, and I strongly suggest to Your Honors that you speak directly to the accused and find out whether they were acting on [his] instructions or not.
Duch leans over his desk to confer with Kar Savuth. The reply to the prosecutor's challenge seems to get the Cambodian lawyer revved up. He nods his head very firmly several times, and slices through the air above his desk with both hands.
The defense's disintegration becomes blatant during the recess. Duch confers with Kar Savuth while the team's four international lawyers deliberate among themselves. Then Kar Savuth leaves the room and Duch sits alone. When Kar Savuth returns, Duch exits the room, as do Roux and his team; Kar Savuth remains alone in the courtroom. When Duch returns, he greets several former students through the glass pane and then returns to his box. François Roux reappears, puts his robe back on, and comes over to talk to Duch. Behind him, Kar Savuth rehearses, with much gesticulation, the answer he's about to give. A minute before the proceedings resume, the two lawyers exchange a few strong words. Kar Savuth quickly discusses something with Duch. The judges return to the courtroom. Presiding Judge Nil Nonn remarks that the statements made by the defense lawyers have been particularly incoherent. He then lets the Cambodian lawyer speak.
Either there's a problem with the interpreters or he is particularly muddled, but Kar Savuth's words come across as mostly incomprehensible. Still, though his reasoning is flawed, his conclusion is crystal-clear: Duch cannot be judged according to national law.
The old lawyer certainly doesn't find himself at a loss for words. In the middle of his diatribe, he mentions a few unsettling facts: for example, that three-quarters of the victims of S-21 were themselves servants of the regime and that, consequently, the tribunal ought not to make it its priority to give justice to all these Khmer Rouge cadres with blood on their own hands. But his speech is nothing more than a jumble of vague, incomplete, rehashed, or irrelevant ideas. After having confused the sentencing, the non-retroactivity of the law, and the reality of the state of war with Vietnam, Kar Savuth takes off his spectacles and, while the crowd murmurs, concludes: “Duch has been held for over ten years. Other wardens aren't in prison. Therefore, I think the time has come for the court to release my client and to allow him to go home.”
When François Roux stands and straightens his frail body with his characteristic slowness, it's usually an internalized way of warming up for the coming challenge. This time, it's more like the movement of the condemned man laboriously carrying his cross up Calvary Hill.
