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Phnom Penh (Cambodia): Once a devoted Khmer
Rouge communist, the regime's former chief executioner
traded leftist ideology for Jesus, and now, with his
trial going on, presents himself as a pious, contrite,
and cooperative old man.
"I would like to seek forgiveness from the victims,"
Kaing Guek Eav, alias "Duch," told judges Monday at the
UN-backed Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of
Cambodia (ECCC).
At the second day of his trial on March 31, he said: "I
would like to emphasize that I am responsible for the
crimes committed at S-21 [prison], especially the
torture and execution of the people there."
This is the penitent Christian that Cheam Socheong, the
director of Phkoam High School where Duch (pronounced "Doik")
taught math in the 1990s, remembers well. "Duch often
talked of God and the good way," Mr. Cheam said in a
recent interview at his school office in Cambodia's
remote northwest. "He asked me why I didn't go to
church. He tried to convert me.”
First with communism, then Christianity, Duch has always
embraced and espoused his beliefs with fervor, friends
and family say.
The court's psychological exam noted "obsessive" traits
in his personality, "both past and present," though it
did not link that trait specifically with his faith. The
intensity that once turned Duch into a feared prison
chief has now transformed him into an evangelical
Christian eager to cooperate with the court and seek
forgiveness. Of five former Khmer Rouge cadres now in
detention at the ECCC, he is the sole detainee to have
cooperated with the investigating judges.
Duch's embrace of Christianity makes him "less likely
than other defendants to justify the regime's abuses as
necessary but painful steps toward socialism," says
Stanford University's John Ciorciari, a senior legal
adviser to the nonprofit Documentation Center of
Cambodia.
When the Vietnamese Army sacked Phnom Penh in 1979, Duch
fled with the Khmer Rouge to Cambodia's western border.
He remained a cadre until 1992, when he moved his wife
and four children to the village of Phkoam in Banteay
Meanchey Province and resumed teaching math. He used the
alias "Hang Pin" to hide his identity.
Soon after Duch moved to Phkoam, his neighbor, Suon Sito,
invited him to attend the local Christian church. Duch
embraced the religion and cast aside his communist
beliefs, Mr. Suon said in a recent interview. Duch
became vocal about his faith and began inviting others
to attend services, says Suon, and eventually became a
lay pastor.
Duch's eldest child, Ky Sievkim, said her father
baptized her soon after his conversion. "Every night my
father led me in prayer. Every Sunday he brought out the
Bible and read it to the whole family," she said during
a recent interview at her home in Battambang Province.
Duch later started a house church near Svay Chek High
School, where he taught from 1996 to 1997. During the
work day, he proselytized. "He spoke of Jesus Christ and
tried to convince other teachers to believe," said Hun
Smien, the school's former director.
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