A Tuol Sleng interrogator speaks out

May Titthara
The Phnom Penh Post

Seated under a wooden house in a remote part of Takeo province’s Bati district, a grey-haired man in a blue and grey shirt takes a cigarette from his pack and lights it.

Exhaling a cloud of white smoke, the thin man, named Prak Khan, begins to speak.

“I never told my bitter background to anybody in my village, even my wife,” he says. “They only know me as a banana seller.”

What his neighbours don’t know is that from 1976 to 1979, Prak Khan, 60, was an interrogator at the infamous S-21 detention centre.

Records from the Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-CAM) confirm that Prak Khan interrogated 51 prisoners, rewriting two of their confessions.

Some were high-level members of the Khmer Rouge purged from party ranks. Some were culled from the military, both Pol Pot’s and Lon Nol’s. Some were secretaries of districts and regions, and the rest were simply people accused of espionage by an increasingly paranoid Khmer Rouge leadership.

“My wife just found out when the ECCC invited me to testify on Case 001, so from now on, I have to speak out to let the young generation know about their history,” he says, his sadness plainly visible.

Prak Khan was born into a farming family in Takeo province, the oldest son out of five brothers and sisters. He worked on the farm feeding animals until 1971, when he joined the Khmer Rouge.

Readmore