War With Vietnam and Conflicts Within the ECCC

by Laura MacDonald, Member of the New York Bar and Consultant to the Center for International Human Rights, Northwestern University School of Law
— 10 Jun, 2009

Vietnamese Civilians, Spies, and POWs at S-21

Kaing Guek Eav (alias Duch) completed his testimony today regarding the armed conflict between Cambodia and Vietnam, which arguably was waged during the entire Khmer Rouge period from April 17, 1975 to January 6, 1979.

Based on his current knowledge, Duch does not deny the war started in April 1975, but he claims a very limited knowledge of the conflict before January 6, 1978. Duch’s superior, Son Sen, with whom he spoke nearly everyday, went off to the battlefields due to the necessity of the conflict in August 1977 and Duch still maintains he knew nothing about what was going on. Judge Silvia Cartwright, the prosecution, and one civil party sought to pick apart this assertion throughout the day, but Duch maintains his superiors only gave him instructions about how to manage Tuol Sleng prison (S-21) and did not share information about current events with him.

Duch explained that Vietnamese prisoners were categorized as civilians, spies, or combatants by his superiors and he admitted he did not check the accuracy of their designations since anyone sent to S-21 was killed as a general policy. While Duch acknowledges that some Vietnamese civilians and spies came to S-21 before 1978, he explains that Vietnamese prisoners of war (POWs) started coming in large numbers in January 1978. Before 1978, Duch said he was ordered to focus his interrogations on spying, whereas when the POWs started arriving he was ordered to focus on extracting confessions to be broadcast for the propaganda purposes of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). Duch admitted to ordering interrogators to use whatever means necessary to achieve the CPK objective of getting usable confessions. Duch also said the confessions were often amended by his superiors to make better propaganda. On a few occasions, Duch sent S-21 staff to the battlefields to bring POWs back to S-21…

Read more: ctm_blog_6-10-2009

Cambodia Tribunal Monitor’s Trial Observer posts are written according to the personal observations and opinions of the writer and do not constitute a transcript of ECCC proceedings or the views of Cambodia Tribunal Monitor and/or its partners. Official court transcripts for the ECCC’s hearings may be accessed at the ECCC website.