Free The Master of Confessions by Thierry Cruvellier

secret. Each of us had to keep things secret. We were supposed to look after only those things that concerned us, or else we would be reported.”
    Duch taught his staff that secrecy was the very soul of their mission and that, without it, their work made no sense. Guards and interrogators were not authorized to communicate with other units. Merely having contact with the outside world was deemed suspicious. Secrecy was an obsession, the Party’s alpha and omega. It was also a formidable instrument of control that, like everything else in Democratic Kampuchea, eventually imposed its own insane logic over all other lines of reasoning. The systematic execution of prisoners at S-21 was in large part due to the absolute imperative of keeping the prison secret. Due to secrecy becoming of utmost importance, it was decided that nobody could get out alive. And if someone were arrested by mistake, then the secrecy of the institution took precedence over that man’s life.
    Then there was the fear. Nothing was more widespread than fear. In court, the prosecutor doesn’t like it when the defense team emphasizes the atmosphere of terror that reigned over the country at the time. He worries that it’s too easy an excuse for the defendant, who, he says, freely chose the path that led to his crimes and who enthusiastically organized the execution of his people.
    Nevertheless, under the regime, the threat of annihilation hovered over everyone, as those who worked at S-21 knew better than anyone. Most of the staff working at the prison complex was recruited from a single division of the Army of Democratic Kampuchea, the 703. Both of Duch’s deputies, Hor and Nun Huy, were from Division 703, as was his predecessor, Nath. The day the division—like so many others before it—fell from grace, Duch did some housecleaning. Nath’s life ended in the prison he used to run. His wife followed him in death. Nun Huy, the third-in-command at the prison after Duch and Hor, was wiped out in December 1978, along with his wife and children, a month before the Vietnamese troops entered the city. Hor, Duch’s number two, was also on the hot seat, guilty of having compromised the interrogation of a high-ranking Party official: “The secretary of Division 703 was eliminated first. Then his subordinates were placed under the upper echelon’s supervision. They couldn’t avoid being purged. It was only a matter of time. That was the process.”
    Duch had no illusions about his own fate. “I knew it was only a matter of time before I would be arrested.”
    During the trial’s preliminary investigative phase, Duch makes a point of emphasizing the appalling absurdity of the system in which he was caught:
    After each arrest, I would ask myself, “Are they really guilty? Are they really traitors? Am I going to be arrested, too, before I get the chance to know whether it’s fair or not?” And I thought, well, I’ll just have to wait for them to arrest me before I can dare say that the arrests are unjust.
    Yet despite waiting for his own end, Duch’s zeal never flagged; he continued to write damning reports about his own subordinates. In no sense could any of them have been described as his protégés.
    â€œWere you aware that your reports meant that these members of your staff would be ‘smashed’?”
    â€œI knew that the decision would be made to arrest them,” replies Duch evasively.
    â€œThat’s not a straight answer, but it doesn’t really matter,” says Judge Lavergne.
    Secrecy, fear, and obedience were omnipresent; there was no questioning authority: “I am alive because of my loyal obedience. I never hid anything. Honesty and a commitment to doing things correctly are why I survived. Other survivors probably share these same qualities.”
    The final quality required by the Khmer Rouge was enthusiasm. There was no better precaution than