Redeemed Executioner

We arrived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on Saturday afternoon and early Sunday morning met with our host, Vibol, for breakfast. He will host a conference this week of over 400 pastors and church leaders from all over Cambodia. Many are traveling several hours over often dangerous roads and terrain to come together with Christian brothers and sisters to strategize how to reach their countrymen for Jesus Christ.

After breakfast we were greeted warmly in a worship service at the church where Vibol pastors.

Each of the four of us gave testimonies of God’s work and His faithfulness. As was the case last year, we were delighted by the many children who competed for our attention. They love to have their pictures taken.

After lunch a traveling friend and I visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide museum, site of some of the most horrific crimes ever perpetrated by one set of human beings against another. It was my second visit, and my friend’s first. I don’t know that anything else in my life has impacted me as this place has, giving me a greater understanding of the heights of evil that man is capable of reaching.
The story in brief: As the Vietnam War wound down but spilled over into Cambodia, the government of Prime Minister Lon Nol (supported by the U.S.) became severely weakened and was overthrown by the communist Khmer Rouge. Led by dictator Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge sought to create an agrarian, self-sufficient economy based on rice production in which everyone was lowered to the same level of class: peasantry. Families were broken up, people were uprooted from the homes in villages and cities and forced to relocate, and loyalty to the “Angkar,” or “the organization,” was supreme. Those with education — or were perceived to be educated — as well as alleged enemies of the regime were tortured, forced to “confess” their crimes, and were executed.

The best known of the country-wide torture chambers was called “S-21,” or Tuol Sleng, which had been a school. The Khmer Rouge converted it into the worst murder scene you can imagine.

The museum is “preserved” in a condition in which you can imagine the decrepit, haunting conditions that prisoners existed under. The museum (nothing like your history museums in the States) is best known for the thousands of black and white photos that were taken of each captive as they were admitted to the place.

All ages were there: old, middle-aged, young, children, infants.

Numbers vary but the most common estimate is that between 17,000 and 20,000 came through there and only seven survived.

Prisoners were chained to bed frames (no mattresses) and those were often the pallets of their torment. This victim was beaten beyond recognition.

Many were kept in former classrooms where makeshift brick walls formed small cells that barely fit their crushed bodies.

These converted dormitories were covered in barbed wire so as to make escape impossible.

Demands upon prisoners were the creation of sick minds.

Many victims of Tuol Sleng were later taken to Cheung Ek, site of dozens of mass graves known as part of the “Killing Fields:”

After the Khmer Rouge fell in 1979 an artist who was imprisoned at Tuol Sleng, Vann Nath, depicted in paintings some of the evil practices:
So why was this necessary in the minds of those who perpetrated these acts? To accomplish a “cleansing,” as Nic Dunlop explains in his book “The Lost Executioner:”

The purpose of these interrogations was to identify and eradicate dissent within the new society and the party itself. As in Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the Khmer Rouge believed an obsessive and continuous cleansing of society was essential for producing a pure revolution – enemies were thought to be everywhere.

S-21 was considered the “heart” of the revolution and essential to its success. “The Lost Executioner” is the fascinating story about how Dunlop, over many years, traveled across Cambodia in search of Tuol Sleng’s commandant, Kaing Guek Eav, known as “Comrade Duch” in the Khmer Rouge. He was singly most responsible for the atrocities, but his story does not end there. After Duch’s wife was murdered in a robbery in 1995, he began attending Bible meetings and heard the teachings of a Khmer-American pastor, Christopher Lapel, whom Dunlop interviewed:

Lapel asked (Duch) what had happened and he told him about his wife and the attack. “My life…I’ve never had peace in my life,” he said. He was guarded and withdrawn. “He was careful about saying too much,” said Lapel. Duch then turned to the pastor, and said, “I have sinned, really sinned, a big sin. I don’t think that my brothers and sisters can forgive me.” He wanted to change, he went on, to become a new person.

Lapel went on to share the Gospel with Duch who became a changed man, performing humanitarian work in refugee camps and hungering after the Word. But later Dunlop confronts Duch with his past, and that compelling account is best left for you to read yourself.