Free Voices From S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison by David P. Chandler Page B

undoubtedly prisoners of war, and 33 other prisoners in the “special prison.” There were also 14 prisoners “working” at that time. These would have included the 7 men known to have survived incarceration at S-21. Although the totals listed here come to only 13,206, given the lacunae in the data it seems prudent to estimate the prison population between 1975 and 1979 as approximately 14,000. 65
The vast majority of prisoners at S-21 were young, ethnic Khmer males from rural backgrounds. They were socially and ethnically indistinguishable from the people who held them captive. With some exceptions, people labeled “class enemies” or “new people” and those suspected of minor crimes were generally held in provincial prisons. 66 Only
238 of the prisoners whose confessions survive, or 6.4 percent, were women. This disparity can be explained by the fact that far fewer women than men served in the military units so heavily targeted by santebal, and very few held positions of responsibility in DK and so could be accused of serious counterrevolutionary crimes. The number of women in the prison population, however, was undoubtedly higher than the number of women’s confessions would suggest. We know that dozens of higher-ranking prisoners’ wives and even some of their mothers were incarcerated at S-21 and put to death, often without undergoing interrogation. Those female prisoners who wrote confessions, on the other hand, included several holding high rank, such as district chiefs, factory and hospital administrators, and military cadres, as well as representatives of more traditional female callings such as nurses and cooks. 67
Roughly 500 of the prisoners whose confessions have survived, or slightly more than 10 percent of the total, had held positions of responsibility in DK. In this category I include the political secretaries of military units and government offices, the secretaries of individual sectors and their assistants, regimental and divisional military commanders, cadres running industrial enterprises such as factories and railways, and those working in such government ministries as foreign affairs, information, industry and trade. Thirty of those purged had at one time been members of the Party’s Central Committee. 68
Although their fates were the same, higher-ranking prisoners at S-21 often received special treatment. Kok Sros has recalled that the cadres quartered in the so-called “special prison” slept on beds and received the same rations as the staff. After they had been interrogated and tortured, he said, they were bathed and patched up by S-21 paramedical personnel and given time to compose more “accurate” confessions. Hoping to postpone or lessen torture, and perhaps in some cases hop-ing to be released, many senior cadres decided to cooperate and wrote confessions of several hundred pages. The guards assigned to them, Kok Sros recalled, were chosen from the best in the contingent. The special treatment that the cadres received can be explained in part by lingering feelings of respect for high-ranking figures, but it is more likely to have been connected with the Party Center’s requirement that they be kept healthy and comfortable enough to compose plausible confessions. 69 None of the confessions provide descriptions of day-to-day life at the prison or any details about prisoners’ relations with each other. In this respect the sources from S-21 are much sparser from those we can consult
in studying the Holocaust, or the Argentine “dirty war,” or the Chinese and Soviet prison camps, not only because survivors of these facilities are far more numerous but also because the secrecy and the “discipline” of S-21 shut off the prisoners from each other and shut us off from nearly everything that was produced at the facility except confessions, memoranda, and self-critical autobiographies. In addition, unlike the Nazi camps, S-21 had very few “trusties.” The better treatment