Duch, Master of the Forges of Hell

Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge regime was responsible for the deaths of approximately 1.8 million people, that is to say, a quarter of the Cambodian population. Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, was the director of M13, the prison of the Khmer Rouge underground forces, for four years, before being posted by the Angkar to the S21 centre in Phnom Penh. As the party secretary in S21, he was in command between 1975 and 1979 of this Khmer Rouge death machine where, according to remaining archives, at least 12,380 people died. But how many disappeared, “crushed, reduced to dust”, without anyone ever finding a trace of them? Duch reveals here how he believes he faithfully completed his commission and the reasons which led him to take command of M13 and then S21.

Rithy Panh transcribes his unadulterated account, unembellished, in the isolation of a one-to-one encounter. In parallel, he puts it into pers-pective with archive pictures and accounts of survivors. Implacably, as the interview progresses, the infernal machine of a system of human destruction is depicted through the maniac description of its minute mechanisms.