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were sent for re-education and many subsequently perished. Namhong was spared and
reportedly helped run the camp as the “chief” of its detainees. 5 A biographical file kept
at the Stasi archives in Berlin similarly describes Namhong as an ordinary prisoner who
served as a camp “director” ( Leiter ) and enjoyed privileges not accorded other inmates,
such as presenting the camp to Ieng Sary during inspections. Namhong has consistently
denied any hand in atrocities, and has filed defamation suits against journalists and oth-
er individuals—including King Sihanouk and Sam Rainsy—who have alleged otherwise.
But whether or not he and others were guilty of anything, the CPP opposed any court that
might air the question in public.
From the start Hun Sen took an instrumental view of justice, supporting trials when it
was politically expedient and then cooling off once the Khmer Rouge were on the verge
of collapse. When Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea defected to the government in Decem-
ber 1998, dealing the movement its final death-blow, Hun Sen extended his “warmest
welcome” to the pair and promised privately not to hand them over to an international
court. The two ageing genocidaires rang in the New Year in the seaside resort town of
Sihanoukville, visited Angkor Wat, and then returned to civilian life as free men, to a
chorus of outrage from victims and rights advocates. Years earlier Hun Sen had excori-
ated the pair as two Khmer Rouge “ringleaders” who should be put in the dock. Now he
argued that intemperate moves toward trials could threaten the country's fragile peace. It
was time to “dig a hole and bury the past.” 6
As the debate raged between Hun Sen and his critics, the government made two im-
portant arrests. The first was of Ta Mok, captured by the Cambodian military in March
1999. At around the same time, the Irish photographer Nic Dunlop stumbled unexpec-
tedly across a skinny, buck-toothed man living in Samlaut. After two decades, Comrade
Duch, the former chief of S-21, was alive and well. He had converted to Christianity and
taken a job in the district education office. Soon after Dunlop and the American journalist
Nate Thayer published their landmark interview with Duch, he too was arrested. Duch
appeared resigned to his fate. Whether he would be tried, he told Dunlop, was now “up to
Hun Sen and Jesus.” 7
Still smarting from the Group of Experts report, Hun Sen announced that the two pris-
oners would be tried domestically. The UN renewed its calls for an international trial.
During a visit to Phnom Penh in April 1999, US Senator John Kerry helped break the
deadlock by floating the novel idea of a “mixed” tribunal, one that would include both
domestic and international personnel. Kerry's proposal got the negotiations back on track.
But translating the “mixed” tribunal formula into something that was acceptable to both
sides would take years of agonizing negotiations, without ever resolving the underlying
disagreement. The only trial the UN wanted was one Hun Sen couldn't control; the only
trial Hun Sen wanted was one he could.
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