Kaing Guek Eav, the 77-year-old former Khmer Rouge commander died on Wednesday. Nicknamed Duch, Eav oversaw the mass murder of at least 14,000 Cambodians at the notorious Tuol Sleng prison. He was the first senior member of the Khmer Rouge to face trial for his role in a regime blamed for at least 1.7 million deaths in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979.
Duch died early on Wednesday morning at the Khmer Soviet Friendship Hospital in Phnom Penh, Khmer Rouge tribunal spokesman Neth Pheaktra said. Though the exact cause of death is not known, Duch had been ill in recent years.
His death is “a reminder that justice is a long and difficult” process, said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which researches the Khmer Rouge regime.
Duch, who joined the Maoist movement led by Pol Pot in 1967 was put in charge of Tuol Sleng after the regime seized power in 1975. During the Khmer Rouge regime, cities were cleared and people sent to live in villages where they died of disease, starvation and overwork. The regime aimed to create an agrarian utopia. The Tuol Sleng prison, detainees, mostly teenagers codenamed 'S-21’ were tortured by Khmer Rouge guards. Duch viewed teens as “like a blank piece of paper” and easily indoctrinated.
Confessions from non-existent crimes were extracted and the traitors were then instructed to be ‘smashed to bits’. Anyone from teachers to school children, pregnant women and ‘intellectuals’ were deemed to be traitors by the Khmer Rouge regime.
Duch, a former maths teacher kept his school-turned-jail meticulously organised. Pictures, confessions and other documents were meticulously maintained, with which prosecutors were able to trace the harrowing final months of thousands of inmates.