News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: S-21 - Tuol Sleng Killing Centre

Date: May 13, 2001

"Cambodia Photographer Faces Charges
By CHRIS DECHERD, Associated Press Writer

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) - Day after day Nhem En peered at the prisoners through the lens of his box camera, barely giving a second glance at the ashen, hopeless faces he was recording for the bureaucracy of torture and death.

Once photographed, the prisoners were taken to their cells inside S-21, the Khmer Rouge (news - web sites)'s most infamous torture center.

Nhem En was just 15, and already chief photographer of S-21. Today, 21 years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, he lives in a village with his wife and six children, and dreams of opening his own photography shop.

But for those seeking to punish the Khmer Rouge for their atrocities, Nhem En poses a quandary. Should he be prosecuted for being part of the system, or excused because he had no choice?

Nhem En, now 41, says he is ready either way - to testify against his former bosses, or be judged alongside them.

``I would not be afraid to be judged,'' said Nhem En in an interview in Phnom Penh. ``My work was to take pictures only, and if I had refused I would have been killed.''

He may have his day in court. But when is anybody's guess.

In January, after years of delays, the Cambodian government finished drafting legislation to establish a U.N.-assisted war crimes tribunal of Cambodian and foreign judges.

The legislation must still be amended into line with the constitution, approved again by Parliament, reviewed by the Constitutional Council and signed by King Norodom Sihanouk.

The Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975 and spent four years trying to build a farmers' utopia. More than 1.7 million people died of starvation, disease, overwork or executions.

No one chronicled the killing machine like Nhem En and his five apprentices at S-21, a former school in Phnom Penh. It was death's waiting room through which 16,000 people passed.

It is now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, where tourists gaze on Nhem En's work - montages of large and small black-and-white photographs of inmates.

Nhem En recalls the anguished looks on the faces of his disoriented subjects, some of whom had just had their blindfolds removed. But he said he never interacted with them.

``According to regulations, talking was not part of my work,'' he said.

Several prisoners professed their innocence to him while he prepared to take their picture.

One was a cousin from his home village. Fearing arrest or worse, Nhem En kept quiet and clicked.

The youth sometimes had to photograph the tortured dead.

One picture in the museum shows a person partly covered in a soiled sheet, ankles still shackled, lying on the floor. Another is a close-up of a man in his 50s, eyes and mouth wide open. A sign in Khmer under the face says ``Ros Thoung, 05-10-77.''

Nhem En said he feels bad about those who died. He recalled hearing screams from the cells at night.

He was 10 when he left the family farm and followed his four brothers into the Khmer Rouge in 1970 to fight the U.S.-backed regime.

Following the Khmer Rouge's victory he was sent to Shanghai to study photography and filmmaking.

He returned after six months and was made chief photographer, using Chinese box cameras and Japanese or German models seized from shops.

After Vietnamese forces took over Cambodia, Nhem En retreated into the jungle with other cadres, including Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot.

In 1996 he defected and lives free but poor in the isolated village of Anlong Veng, 190 miles from the capital.

He is among thousands of middle-ranking Khmer Rouge activists who may never be tried since the proposed tribunal is meant to prosecute only the ``most responsible.''

But many claim that morally, Nhem En has blood on his hands.

Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, notes that the photography unit worked in concert with the prison torturers and killers, and says Nhem En's selection for study in China indicates he was a trusted cadre.

``The photographers did not kill anybody and, probably, they did not beat anybody, but I think, morally, they live in guilt,'' Youk Chhang said.

But he acknowledged that Nhem En may be of more value to the tribunal as a witness than as a defendant.

``He knows a lot,'' Youk Chhang said. ``I hope he knows how to put into words what he really has seen.''

Only two Khmer Rouge high-ups are currently in custody. They are Ta Mok, the movement's longtime military leader, and Kang Kek Iev, better known as Duch, who ran the S-21 prison."