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French ethnologist Francois Bizot survived three months in a Khmer
Rouge camp led by a man who is widely believed to be one of the
regime's most notorious torturers.
Thirty-six years later, Bizot says he is ready to testify at
Cambodia's UN-backed genocide tribunal, which on July 31 detained
his one-time captor Duch on charges of crimes against humanity.
"It's possible that I will testify," Bizot told Agence
France-Presse in an interview in the northern Thai city of Chiang
Mai, where he settled after fleeing Cambodia.
Up to two million people, about one quarter of Cambodia's
population, died under the ultra-Maoist regime that plunged the
country into a reign of terror between 1975 and 1979, emptying the
cities into the countryside where people were forced into labor and
opponents were eliminated.
Bizot was accused of spying, and was held for three months in
1971 in a Khmer Rouge camp headed by Kaing Geuk Eav, better known
by his alias Duch.
"I owe him my life, I'm sure of it," said Bizot, who believes
that Duch engineered his release, which he described in his book
"The Gate."
Nonetheless, the 67-year-old author said he's ready to take the
stand at the tribunal.
"Whether I'm called by the defense or the prosecution, I will
say the same thing: you cannot minimize the torturers' actions and
the terrible suffering endured by the victims and their
families."
It would not be the first time that Bizot comes face-to-face
with Duch. They last met in February 2003, when Bizot saw Duch
while he was being held in a Phnom Penh prison.
Bizot said he was "fascinated by the juxtaposition of the man
and the monster" that he has come to see in Duch. He said he fears
that Cambodia's tribunal, like past war crimes trials, could end
up demonizing the accused and losing the human aspect to their
cases.
"The torturers dehumanize their victims in order to torture and
crush them. We need to stop this way of thinking," said Bizot.
"If the accused is judged as a torturer who has a right to have
his humanity rehabilitated, that becomes less an accident of
history. That is someone who begins to have a dimension that scares
us, because we begin to understand the human drama that plays out
inside of him.
"If there is a hope, it's in this humanization of the
torturer."
A few years after detaining, interrogating and finally sparing
Bizot, Duch went on to head the infamous Tuol Sleng torture center.
Some 16,000 people passed through its hellish chambers, where some
of the Khmer Rouge's worst atrocities were carried out.
Duch's lawyer has told the tribunal that he was merely
following orders.
Bizot believes that Duch had devoted his life to the Khmer
Rouge's cause.
"If the Khmer Rouge had won, he would hold an important rank
today," he said.
"There are forces that can make a man cowardly, destructive,
heartless. When the rule of law disappears, these forces that exist
even in normal times suddenly can make us killers, makes us aspire
to positions that turn us into monsters, into people we never
thought we'd become," he said.
When the Khmer Rouge trial opens, Bizot said "the crimes should
in no way be minimized, but the totality of the man should be
shown."
"Understanding does not mean forgiveness," he said.
Duch, 65, is so far the only former Khmer Rouge cadre charged by
the tribunal since it opened last year.
Four other leaders could be charged soon, but new delays
threaten to hold up the proceedings.
Bizot said the delays are just "a question of big bucks" being
sorted out between the Cambodians and the international
community.
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