Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} A Cambodian Prison Portrait. One Year in the 's S-21 by Vann Nath A Cambodian Prison Portrait. One Year in the Khmer Rouge's S-21 by Vann Nath. Vann Nath was born in Phum Sophy village, Srok district, Battambang Province in northwestern . The exact date and year of his birth was unknown, but it was common for poor Cambodians born in rural areas not to have a proper birth certificate. He was educated at Wat Sopee pagoda as a child. His parents were separated, and he had two brothers and an older sister. They earned a living by selling a type of Khmer white noodles called ‘num banhchok’. They were so poor that Nath had no chance to get a proper education. By the time he was 14 or 15, he was working at factory jobs for 500-600 riel a month (less than 25 cents). Nath became interested in painting while he was studying at Wat Sopee pagoda. “I became very attracted to painting when I went into the pagoda and I saw people painting a picture on the side of the wall of a temple.” Instead of pursuing painting, he served as a monk from the age of 17 to 21. “Every family has a son…one of the sons must go and serve as a monk — it is considered bad for the Cambodian family to not have a son who is a monk”, says Vann Nath. When his sister died, Vann Nath left the monkhood to start working to help support the family. He enrolled in a private painting school in 1965. “School was far from my house, and I couldn’t afford a bicycle. Because our family life was hard, only my mother was working to support the whole family and she became older and older and I had to pay the tuition for the painting school.” Later, the school allowed Vann Nath to work there in exchange for the tuition fee. After two years, he was able to profit from his own painting work. Living Under Khmer Rouge Regime. At the time of his arrest on January 7, 1978, Vann Nath was working in a rice field in his home province of Battambang like many other Battambang locals. The Khmer Rouge took him to Wat Kandal, a Buddhist temple used as a detainment center. They told him that he was accused of violating the moral code of the organization of Communist Party of Kampuchea|Angkar. He did not understand what that meant. Subsequently, he was transferred and deported to a security prison in . This security prison is known as S-21 by the Khmer Rouge and it was formerly a high school known as Tuol Sleng high school. There, people are interrogated and executed on a daily basis. Towards the fall of the Khmer Rouge and the invasion of the Vietnamese army in 1979, only seven prisoners made out of the prison alive. Vann Nath was one of them. Vann Nath was a painter and writer whose memoirs and paintings of his experiences in the infamous Tuol Sleng prison are a powerful and poignant testimony to the crimes of the Khmer Rouge. Vann Nath was an outspoken advocate for justice for victims of the crimes of the Khmer Rouge and this is reflected in his writing. His 1998 memoir A Cambodian Prison Portrait: One Year in the Khmer Rouge’s S-21 Prison , about his experiences at S-21 is the only written account by a survivor of the prison. It has been translated from English into French and Swedish. Vann Nath was one of Cambodia’s most prominent artists. His life was only spared by his captor, Comrade Duch, so that he could be put to work on painting and sculpting portraits of . [3] He played an important role in helping to revive the arts in Cambodia after decades of war and genocide. During 2001 and 2002, Vann Nath worked intensively with Cambodian film director in the preparation of a documentary film entitled S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine . [4] Vann Nath was interviewed in the film, in which Panh brought together former prisoners and guards of the former Tuol Sleng prison. Vann Nath confronted and questioned his former torturers in the documentary film. To recognize their work, both, Vann Nath and Rithy Panh have been conferred the title of Dr. honoris causa by the University of Paris VIII on May 24, 2011. Despite battling long-standing health problems, including chronic kidney disease, Vann Nath continued to paint and write about his experiences under the Pol Pot regime. He suffered from heart attack and went into a coma. He died on 5 September 2011 at the Calmette Hospital in Phnom Penh. [1] He was approximately 66 years old. Vann Nath obituary. After his escape from S21, the prison hell of the Khmer Rouge in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, the painter Vann Nath became the most celebrated survivor, and an important witness, of one of history's darkest chapters. His graphic depictions of the horrendous torture at S21, painted in the years after his release, became evidence in the conviction of the prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, by the UN-backed Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal that sat in Phnom Penh from 2007 onwards. In January 1978, Vann – who has died aged 65, after lapsing into a coma following breathing difficulties – was detained by the Khmer Rouge as an "enemy of the state". He was taken to S21, also known as Tuol Sleng, the headquarters of the (state security). This was the interrogation, intelligence and torture centre of the Khmer Rouge. At least 15,000 suffered the same incarceration. Only a handful survived. The documentary archives from S21 reveal that Vann's name was on the execution list, signed by Duch, in 1978. At the last minute, Duch, who orchestrated the confessions and torture of the inmates, scribbled a note: "Spare the painter." The last-minute reprieve came about because they needed someone to paint a portrait of their supreme leader, Pol Pot. Vann was among the seven or eight prisoners who narrowly escaped death by dint of their special skills and usefulness to the regime. Vann was spared in order to paint Pol Pot. Photograph: Mak Remissa/EPA. Vann was born into a poor family who could not afford to send him to school. He had two brothers and a sister, and grew up in Battambang province, western Cambodia. His interest in art was sparked by the elaborate paintings that adorn the walls of Cambodia's Buddhist temples. He left home to serve as a Buddhist monk from the age of 17 to 21. He then enrolled at a painting school. Before 1975, when the Khmer Rouge took power, his life as a painter of landscapes and cinema posters in Battambang was unexceptional and apolitical. He was working in a rice field when he was arrested in 1978. The Khmer Rouge took him to Wat Kandal, a temple used as a detention centre, and told him that he had violated the regime's moral code. Huge numbers of artists and other professionals perished during the Pot Pot regime. In 1979, Vietnamese troops liberated Phnom Penh, and the Khmer Rouge fled the city. In the ensuing confusion, Vann and the few other survivors were able to escape. The sinister S21 prison was preserved and converted into the Tuol Sleng Memorial and Genocide Museum, which has been open to the public since 1980. Commissioned by the new government's ministry of information and culture, in the 1980s Vann vividly captured on canvas the horrendous torture and excruciating suffering he experienced along with his fellow inmates. These starkly vivid paintings still adorn the walls of the museum. In 1998, Vann's story, A Cambodian Prison Portrait: One Year in the Khmer Rouge's S21, was published. He appeared in the film S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (2003), in which he confronted his former jailers in a tensely dramatic reconstruction of life inside Pol Pot's torture chamber. He interrogated the prison guards with a calm dignity in his search for answers, explanations and truth. This riveting film, directed by the Cambodian film-maker Rithy Panh, received the François Chalais prize at Cannes in 2003. Vann has been widely recognised for his work. He received the Hellman/Hammett award for persecuted writers twice. He was artist in residence at Providence College, Rhode Island, during the Spirit of Cambodia art exhibition in 2002, and during a US book tour in 2003 he was made an honorary citizen of Lowell, Massachusetts. Surely his finest moment came as a key witness in the courtroom in the historic encounter between Vann and his former jailer, Duch. For the victims of the "", it had been an agonisingly long wait for justice. Vann declared in 2009, when the in Phnom Penh commenced: "I have waited 30 years for this. I never imagined that I would be able to sit in this courtroom today to describe my plight, my experience. I hope by the end that justice can be tangible, can be seen by everybody." Vann suffered from kidney disease for many years and underwent periodic dialysis treatment, although he still managed to travel abroad for exhibitions of his work. In 2010, he suffered from severe internal abdomenal bleeding. With no financial support from his own government, he was forced to survive on the sales of his paintings. Vann's hugely expensive medical treatment prompted Rithy to launch a successful fundraising campaign for him. In spite of his personal suffering and financial hardship, Vann never lost his determination to fight for justice. He is survived by his wife, Kith Eng, two daughters and a son. Vann Nath, artist and human rights activist, born 1946; died 5 September 2011. This article was amended on 7 September 2011. The original said that in 2010 Vann Nath required spinal surgery, and that he was survived by two children. These points have been corrected. Vann Nath, the painter of the Khmer Rouge. Vann Nath was a Cambodian painter who endured torture as a prisoner of the Khmer Rouge and whose life was spared to paint portraits of the Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot. His paintings depict the excruciating violence he witnessed as a prisoner and became a precious visual testimony of Cambodia’s darkest page. April 17 is the anniversary of the at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot. Between 1975 and 1979, Cambodia saw one of the most violent and devastating mass killings of the 20th century. On April 17, 1975, the Communist Party of Kampuchea, also known as Khmer Rouge, took complete control of Cambodia by seizing the nation’s capital, Phnom Pehn. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge aimed at turning Cambodia into a Maoist agricultural commune dominated by farmers. Anyone who remotely looked educated and for any reason was not a manual worker was considered an “ enemy of the people ”. For this reason, politicians, intellectuals, teachers, representatives of the former regime, those who had education or even just wore glasses, a sign of literacy, were killed straightaway. The survivors were deported to the countryside and forced to grow rice and jute, under penalty of death. Between 1.5 and 1.8 million people lost their lives in the Cambodian genocide, with the Khmer Rouge killing nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s population in just four years through starvation, lack of medical care, overwork, tortures, and mass killings. Paradoxically, the Khmer Rouge spared the life of a painter called Vann Nath, who, through his art, would have borne witness to the Cambodian genocide’s atrocities. Born in 1946 in Phum Sophy, a village in Battambang province, Vann Nath came from a poor family who could not afford his education. He served as a Buddhist monk for some years and was trained as an artist in the 1960s, later making money as a painter of portraits, movie posters, signs, and billboards. Like many others, when the Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975, Nath was deported to the countryside and forced to work in a rice field. With no reason, he was inexplicably arrested in 1978 and transferred to Tuol Sleng prison, code-named S-21 , a Khmer compound term for “security police”. Pol Pot’s secret prison, S-21 is known for having been a horrific institution where thousands of people, including women and children, endured grisly tortures and were later put to death. According to the records, of the at least fourteen thousand people held by S-21, only a dozen were exempted from death, seven of whom later came forward with memoirs about their experience. Among those, there was Vann Nath. Once transferred to S-21, Nath was photographed, imprisoned, and tortured, but his life was spared when the prison guards discovered that he could paint. Until the end of the Khmer Rouge regime, Nath was recruited to paint portraits of Pol Pot while remaining in prison and witnessing the atrocities of the genocides, often painting while hearing the screams of those tortured. Nath fled the S-21 prison on January 7, 1979, when the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge regime came to an end. A year later, the S-21 interrogation and detention center was turned into the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum . This memorial site preserves the memory of Cambodia’s darkest page “with the aim to encourage visitors to be messengers of peace”. To this end, the museum commissioned Nath to paint the atrocities he had witnessed as a S-21 prisoner. With great sufferance, Nath pieced together his memories of the arrests, tortures, and killings into a powerful and precious visual testimony of the Cambodian genocide. Nath devoted his life as a free man to memory . Permanently exhibited at the museum in Phnom Penh, his paintings later became part of his memoir A Cambodian Prison Portrait: One Year in the Khmer Rouge’s S-21 , published in 1998 and translated from Khmer in several foreign languages. Nath died in 2011 after having testified in an UN-baked court against Kaing Guek Eav , the former S-21 prison commander known as Comrade Duch, who was convicted on charges of genocide. Vann Nath. Vann Nath was born in 1946 in Battambang. His art training was through apprenticeship with a local sign painter. Before the war, he painted movie posters and portraits. The fact that Vann Nath’s background was non-traditional helped spare his life during the Pol Pot regime. In 1978 he was sent to Tuol Sleng Prison (“S-21”) in Phnom Penh, where he was tortured and nearly killed. Fortunately, his talents were discovered in time, and the Khmer Rouge asked him to paint many propaganda portraits of Pol Pot. At the end of the war Vann Nath was one of the seven survivors of Tuol Sleng, where nearly 20,000 people died. In 1979 Vann Nath was asked by the new government to paint pictures of the prison tortures for the world to know the secret horrors of the “Killing Fields.” These moving works hang in the prison-turned-museum today, and are unforgettable for all visitors. In 1998 Vann Nath wrote A Prison Portrait: One Year in the Khmer Rouge’s S-21, published by White Lotus Press. Only recently has Vann Nath returned to painting. The most important project for him now is to have his design for an elderly housing complex in Battambang realized. This, he says, is to help those older Cambodians whose children died in the war, thus leaving no one to care for them. This project has recently been published in Ingrid Muan’s article “A Small Start: Vann Nath’s Plan for an Old People’s Home in Battambang, Cambodia” ( Persimmon , Summer, 2001). A recent painting by Vann Nath, The Village of My Birth, appeared in Reyum Gallery’s 2000 exhibition, “The Legacy of Absence: A Cambodian Story.” It has a peaceful, happy note, in contrast to the earlier works he painted to document his prison experience. A Cambodian Prison Portrait. One Year in the Khmer Rouge's S-21 by Vann Nath. VANN NATH: EYEWITNESS TO GENOCIDE. Vann Nath hears screams of torture every night. He is in a room shackled to an iron bar with 20 other prisoners. He’s at the end of the line. Guards arrive. They slowly begin to unfasten the prisoners until they get to him. They tie his hands behind his back and push him out the door. The other prisoners are herded into a truck. They are driven to the killing fields outside Phnom Penh and beaten to death with shovels and hoes. "How long have you been painting pictures?" a guard asks. This might be a trick question, Vann Nath thinks. He answers cautiously: "Since 1965." "Do you draw beautiful pictures?" Vann Nath, who is 32, studied art as a youth and opened a small commercial art business in a provincial town. He specialized in drawing colorful movie billboards and did occasional private portraits. He is modest about his talent and clear about being a commercial artist. He is non-political. He comes from a very poor, fatherless family. He sells noodle soup as a kid to help keep his kin together. After the Khmer Rouge take over the country in 1975, his art business is shuttered and he is ordered to join a peasant commune. He works hard, trying never to draw attention to him or his family. Vann Nath is a faceless member of the Revolution, which is led by the faceless Angkar —The Organization. He’s nothing more than a worker bee. But on December 29, 1977 he is suddenly arrested and taken to Toul Sleng. He has no idea. Like more than a million dead Cambodians, he will never know and will remain bewildered to this day. Cambodia is undergoing what French writer Jean Lacouture later calls “auto-genocide,” something never seen before in history, a people destroying itself for no known reason, except this: The Organization Orders It. The guards escort Vann Nath to another building where a man awaits. He sits on a sofa. Thin, late thirties, unsmiling, he’s called Duch. He is chief of Toul Sleng, a former French lycée, which the Khmer Rouge have turned into their torture center in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. The Khmer Rouge's torture center, called Toul Sleng or S-21, is now a museum that houses many of Vann Nath's paintings, which bear witness to the Cambodian Genocide. Duch has read the personal file Vann Nath was ordered to write like everyone who enters Toul Sleng. Duch knows he is an artist. The guards bring a large photograph of Pol Pot. They place it in front of him. "Do you know why you've been brought here?" Duch asks. "Listen carefully," Duch says. "I want a clear, correct, and noble reproduction of this photograph. Can you do that?" "I cannot guarantee it. I haven't painted for nearly three years. But I will do my best." Vann Nath is assigned to the workroom where a sculptor is making cement busts of Pol Pot. He spends his days painting Pol Pot pictures, which are taken away and distributed. Fourteen thousand Cambodians will die at Toul Sleng. Only seven will survive. Vann Nath is one of them. As Vann Nath and I talk, I feel an odd connection to his experience. He tells me that when he arrived at Toul Sleng most of the people brought in to be tortured and killed were Khmer Rouge from the eastern zone. Pol Pot had turned against them. Unknown to Vann Nath, these were the Khmer Rouge who had captured my future wife Claude, a freelance journalist, and held her for a week in 1970. It was their screams he heard every night. With Vann Nath, holding his self-portrait, the only one of his genocide paintings he chose to keep. Phnom Penh—2001. I also realized I knew something Vann Nath probably didn’t know about the quirk of fate that had saved him, which I had learned from two high- ranking members of The Organization— and his wife Thirith. They told me what had happened to Pol Pot in early 1978, not long after Vann Nath was arrested. Ieng Sary was the Khmer Rouge foreign minister. Thirith was the sister of Pol Pot’s first wife. I was the last journalist to interview them before they were charged seven years later, in 2008, with war crimes. On orders of the government, they were escorted to the Interior Ministry for the meeting with me and my colleague Sos Kem. When Duch showed him the photo, Vann Nath didn’t realize it was Pol Pot. Like almost all Cambodians, he had never heard of Pol Pot or seen any likeness of him. Duch told him to guess who the man was. Vann Nath guessed . He was the public face of the Khmer Rouge and its supposed leader. Duch and the guards burst out laughing. Pol Pot had always remained in the shadows. This was the mystery I tried to unravel when I interviewed former Khmer Rouge officials on my two trips to Cambodia after the war. How did Pol Pot become leader of the Genocide? Pol Pot was soft-spoken, soft-faced, smiling. The Khmer Rouge I talked to said he wasn’t as intelligent as Ieng Sary or his wife. Thirith was the first Cambodian woman to graduate from a university. She spoke English and French. Other high-ranking former Khmer Rouge officials described Pol Pot as a physical coward. They said he never mixed with regular guerrillas, he seemed afraid to get close to them. He refused to reveal his name until after the Khmer Rouge won in 1975, and then continued to maintain a shadowy presence. Ieng Sary, Khmer Rouge foreign minister, and wife Thirith. They were later charged with war crimes. Photo by Sos Kem--2001. Thirith—ex-KR told me—enjoyed seeing people buried alive. (Photo-ZG) I asked Ieng Sary about the Pol Pot mystery. He seemed amazed himself. He said his former brother-in-law had gathered power shrewdly, almost without contention. Then he enforced it with his one-legged military commander, , who was not political but very efficient at killing anyone who opposed “Brother Number One.” "But why did he start killing so many people," I asked. "It was a matter of strategy," Thirith said. "No! No!" her husband quickly interjected, touching her thigh to stop her from speaking further. "It wasn't strategy. It was because Pol Pot didn't want to ask the help of any foreigners, he wanted Cambodians to be self-sufficient. Pol Pot didn't start out with the idea of killing so many. He started by going after those he considered traitors. Then it didn't stop." But I knew Thirith had blurted out the truth. It was in fact a strategy—to create a new society by killing off the old. Total ignorance and complete docility was to be the starting point, an empty slate upon which they intended to write their lunatic ideas about abolishing money and establishing an agrarian Utopia. Ieng Sary and his wife were complicit in the Genocide though they tried to deny it. They had the blood of untold thousands on their hands. A Band of Murderous Brothers. Pol Pot far right. Ieng Sary 3rd left. Khieu Samphan 2nd left. not pictured. Pol Pot executed the rest —1973. "At the end he began to think he could do no wrong," Ieng Sary said. "He acted like a king." They described to me the Mao-like busts Pol Pot ordered made of himself, not long after Vann Nath was arrested, in early 1978, one year before the Vietnamese invaded and overthrew the Khmer Rouge regime. They said that Pol Pot’s Chinese adviser, a super Rasputin sent by Mao himself, had convinced him that he should establish a personality cult like the Chinese leader. That was why Duch started looking for a sculptor and a painter. The sculptor he found easily. And then a commercial artist was brought to Toul Sleng. Vann Nath did not know it but he had been saved by Pol Pot’s Mao-inspired megalomania. After the war, Vann Nath was shown an execution list dated February 16, 1978, signed by Duch. His name was on the list but underlined in red with the notation “Keep.” Everybody else had been killed that day. When he read the list, Vann Nath said, “I felt as weak as though my body had no bones.” After the Vietnamese drove out the Khmer Rouge in 1979, Vann Nath was united with his wife but learned that their two young sons had died of starvation. Toul Sleng was turned into a museum the next year, and he returned to Phnom Penh to bear witness to the horror he had seen. The deepest horror was the way Khmer Rouge ripped babies away from mothers and crushed their skulls. (Vann Nath—Genocide Museum) As my interview with Ieng Sary and Thirith came to a close, I was ready to ask what I had planned as my last question. I wanted to give them a chance to see Vann Nath’s work. “Have you ever been to the Genocide Museum at S-21?” "No," they answered together. "Would you like for me to arrange a private visit? I think I can set it up for you. I'll be your escort." They laughed nervously. They knew I had good enough contacts with the Cambodia government to arrange that. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been sitting for this interview, which was not voluntary on their part. "No, we don't want to go,” they said. “We just want all Cambodians to love each other." In the next few years after he was freed, Vann Nath confronted several of the Khmer Rouge that he suspected had been involved in his arrest. But his most dramatic moment came when he saw Huy, former chief of security at Toul Sleng. “It took me 15 minutes to compose myself,” Vann Nath recalled in his memoirs. “What could I say to the person I had been more afraid of than a tiger? Now suddenly he was standing right in front of me.” Vann Nath walked up to Huy and stared him in the eye. He said, “You are Brother Huy aren’t you?” Huy turned and spoke to him in a gentle manner, pretending not to recognize him. Vann Nath told him who he was. As Huy began to lie, he challenged him aggressively on every point. Slowly, Vann Nath began to see what a weak and insignificant man Huy really was, the very personification of the so-called banality of evil. He turned the conversation to his paintings in the museum, which Huy said he had seen. “Are they exaggerated?” Vann Nath asked. “No, they are not exaggerated,” Huy said. “There were scenes more brutal than that.” “Did you see the picture of the prison guards pulling a baby away from his mother? What did you and your men do with the babies? “Uh, we took them out to kill them.” Vann Nath shouted in shock: “You killed those babies? Oh my God!” He had always thought they had spared the children. This overwhelmed even his worst nightmares about the Genocide. With nothing further to say, Vann Nath walked away, unsteady on his feet, and never saw Huy again. Those kinds of confrontations took place all over Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge killers claimed they had been victims themselves. They said they would have been killed if they disobeyed The Organization’s orders. In fact, more than a dozen guards at Toul Sleng were executed. Duch told Steve Heder, a Cambodia specialist, that he realized near the end that the logic of the revolution meant that he himself would eventually be executed, so he began to ignore his duties and pass the time reading novels in his office. This was one of the reasons why I believed ten years ago—and still believe today—that none of the remaining members of The Organization would be punished by a war crimes tribunal. The part of Cambodia’s population that suffered through the Genocide had not been able to come to grips with it. They were still stunned by what happened. How does one come to grips with insanity? They asked me what I thought the Genocide meant, looking for an answer from an outsider. I had no answer. Many of them wanted revenge and wished to see the remaining members of The Organization punished. But few of them wanted to take it further. Too many people were implicated—in one way or another, the whole country, including Hun Sen, present leader of Cambodia. Some of them were ready to accept that the killers had also been victims. Duch was an easy target. He was not a high-level member of The Organization but a clog in the killing machine. Since his crimes were well documented, he was likely to spend the rest of his life in prison. But he was not nearly as important to understanding what happened as Ieng Sary and Nuon Chea and Kieu Samphan. Youk Chang and the Documentation Center of Cambodia unquestionably deserved, in my opinion, a Nobel Prize for their courage and tireless work over many years to bring members of The Organization to justice. But I feared that was unlikely to happen. Pol Pot never expressed any regret or remorse. He and his killer-in-chief Ta Mok died in their sleep. Probably, I thought, so would Ieng Sary and Thirith and Nuon Chea and Kieu Samphan. It followed the logic of an insane revolution. At the end of our breakfast interview, Vann Nath told me he never wanted to do another painting about the Genocide. He was sick of thinking about violence and brutality and death. He said he would show me the last two paintings he had kept from his genocide period. We went to his roof-top patio where he worked. He brought out his self-portrait which he said he would never sell. The other was his portrait of Mother and Child of the Genocide. It is a heart-wrenching portrait. But it doesn’t belong on my office wall. It belongs where it will be seen by many people to remind us that someplace in the world, at any hour, The Organization still exists. Vann Nath's "Mother and Child of the Genocide." One of the last paintings from his genocide period. (ca. 1980). Notes: 1. Vann Nath’s memoir: A CAMBODIAN PRISON PORTRAIT: One Year in the Khmer Rouge’s S-21 (White Lotus Press - Bangkok:1998)