Chandler_*i_xvi_FM 9/9/99 1:26 PM Page a Voices from S-21 Chandler_*i_xvi_FM 9/9/99 1:26 PM Page b Chandler_*i_xvi_FM 9/9/99 1:26 PM Page i A B O O K The Philip E. Lilienthal imprint honors special books in commemoration of a man whose work at the University of California Press from 1954to 1979 was marked by dedication to young authors and to high standards in the field of Asian Studies. Friends, family, authors, and foundations have together endowed the Lilienthal Fund, which enables the Press to publish under this imprint selected books in a way that reflects the taste and judgment of a great and beloved author. Chandler_*i_xvi_FM 9/9/99 1:26 PM Page ii Chandler_*i_xvi_FM 9/9/99 1:26 PM Page iii David Chandler Voices from S-21 Terror and History in Pol Pot’s Secret Prison University of California Press Berkeley Los Angeles London Chandler_*i_xvi_FM 9/9/99 1:26 PM Page iv University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 1999 by the Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chandler, David P.–. Voices from S-21 : terror and history in Pol Pot’s secret prison / David Chandler. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-520-22005-6 (alk. paper). 1. Torture—Cambodia. 2. Political prisoners— Cambodia. 3. Political persecution— Cambodia. 4. Genocide—Cambodia. 5. Cambodia—Politics and government—1975–79. I. Title. II. Title: Voices from S-Twenty-one. HV8599.C16C48 1999 303.6909596—dc21 99-13924 CIP Manufactured in the United States of America 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).∞ Chandler_*i_xvi_FM 9/9/99 1:26 PM Page v Contents Preface vii 1. Discovering S-21 1 2. S-21: A Total Institution 14 3. Choosing the Enemies 41 4. Framing the Questions 77 5. Forcing the Answers 110 6. Explaining S-21 143 Appendix. Siet Chhe’s Denial of Incest 157 Notes 161 Bibliography 207 Index 233 Photographs follow page 76 Chandler_*i_xvi_FM 9/9/99 1:26 PM Page vi Chandler_*i_xvi_FM 9/9/99 1:26 PM Page vii Preface In April 1975 armed Cambodian radicals, known to the outside world as the Khmer Rouge, were victorious in a five-year-long civil war. Almost at once, and without explaining their rationale, the Khmer Rouge forcibly emptied Cambodia’s towns and cities, abolished money, schools, private property, law courts, and markets, forbade religious practices, and set almost everybody to work in the countryside growing food. We now know that these decisions were made by the hidden, all- powerful Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) as part of its plan to preside over a radical Marxist-Leninist revolution. The Khmer Rouge regime of Democratic Kampuchea (DK), led by a former schoolteacher using the pseudonym Pol Pot, was swept from power by a Vietnamese invasion in January 1979. By then, perhaps as many as 1.5 million Cambodians were dead from malnutrition, overwork, and misdiag- nosed and mistreated diseases. At least another 200,000 people, and probably thousands more, had been executed without trial as “class enemies.” Overall, roughly one in five Cambodians died as a result of the regime. Because so many of the victims were ethnic Cambodians, or Khmer, the French author Jean Lacouture coined the term auto- genocideto describe the process. In August 1981, two years after the collapse of the Pol Pot regime, I traveled to Phnom Penh with four academic colleagues. It was the first vii