A Cambodian Prison Portrait

Tom Howe, Issue #2, Winter 24

Thirty-two years after the horrific events of the Cambodian Genocide, numerous trials took place to bring justice to those accountable for the Khmer Rouge. The first of these was Kaing Guek Eav’s, known as ‘Duch’, the former head of the Tuol Sleng Security Centre or the ‘S-21’ prison. In the audience for the trial was a man named Vann Nath, one of the estimated twelve survivors of at least fifteen-thousand victims of this prison. When Nath was asked why he had come to see the trial and testify, he replied, “for justice” and “to see their faces”.

The Khmer Rouge was a radical communist group that won the Cambodian civil war in 1975. With Pol Pot as their leader, approximately two million people, one quarter of the population, were murdered. They implemented extreme Maoist policies in an attempt to create a classless agrarian society. Religion, music and radio were banned, and citizens no longer had the choice of their own spouses. Money was abolished, all private property was confiscated, and people were forcefully assigned work. This form of society quickly began to fail, leading to food and medicine shortages, and causing people to die from starvation and diseases that were normally treatable. The regime soon attempted to find scapegoats for the failure of their society, and this, in turn, resulted in the deaths and imprisonment of more innocent people.

During the trial, Nath told of his devastating experiences with the regime. Nath, like many other Cambodians, was relocated to the countryside where he had to work long hours with little food. On 30th December 1977, Nath was accused of being a traitor of the regime despite not actually doing anything against the Khmer Rouge. He was tortured using electric shock and taken to the S-21 prison where he was shackled in a communal cell. He was fed only a couple of spoonfuls of rice gruel at each meal, causing him to deteriorate quickly, hygiene was also an issue with no clean showers and a communal toilet bucket in the room causing disease to spread. Nath described the treatment as animalistic. Inmates were often beaten and tortured; most people in the S-21 died soon after their arrival.

The reason Nath survived is because he was a talented artist and a trained painter. He was tasked with the role of creating propaganda paintings, mainly of Pol Pot, in support of the regime. This meant Nath was taken to another room to paint and spent the majority of his time in a room with slightly better conditions. When the Khmer Rouge fell in 1979 as Vietnamese soldiers took over Phnom Penh, Nath was freed from the prison. After he was freed, Nath saw the list of those who were to be executed which had his name crossed out and in red pen “keep for use” was written.

After the genocide Nath began painting the atrocities that happened inside the S-21 prison. They were inspired by Bollywood movie posters and were drawn and painted from memory. Nath creates horrific scenes on his canvas using earth-like colours and dark tones. By modifying the scale of figures in his paintings he manages to express the vulnerability of the victims of the S-21 prison. He uses the motif of children and babies in his work, making them seem extraordinarily small compared to the prison guards, emphasising the vulnerability and innocence of the people who were captured by the regime. His artwork reflects the pain and suffering the people felt, he shapes this by manifesting it in the facial expressions of the prisoners. This altogether creates images that reflect the horrific treatment of Cambodians at the time, giving them not just an artistic significance but also a historical one.

Many of Nath’s paintings now hang in the S-21 which has become the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. These paintings help tell the story of the many Cambodians who lost their lives while in the prison. Nath’s work was also used as evidence in the tribunal of the leader of the S-21 ‘Duch’ who was given a life sentence in 2012.

Even though the museum is central to the understanding of preventing brutality such as this, there have been conversations about closing it down as it would help “heal the wounds” and “bring [the] fractured nation together”. However, in his book Nath argues strongly against this, he believes that if it is converted into something else it would mean that the men, women, and children who lost their lives won’t have anything to show for it. The most important message of Nath’s work is to keep the memory alive, “our children must learn never to treat humans like animals, or lower than animals.” §