Khmer Rouge prison chief describes torture

[Coventina]

Source: Associated Press

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — The chief jailer of the Khmer Rouge, on trial for the killing of thousands of "state enemies" in the 1970s, said Wednesday that he trained peasant children as young as 12 to guard prisoners who were routinely electrocuted and whipped.

Kaing Guek Eav told a special tribunal that torturers used "a kind of mobile phone" connected to an electric current to shock prisoners. Other torture techniques used to extract confessions included whipping and beating.

But he denied that techniques such as putting plastic bags over prisoners' heads or waterboarding — in which drowning is simulated — were used.

Kaing Guek Eav, 66, alias Duch, commanded Phnom Penh's S-21 prison, where as many as 16,000 men, women and children are believed to have been tortured before being sent to their deaths.



Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iIuntCU1mCsWYORH7ffwxpYipg1gD97S51F80

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Please read the entire article.
Especially chilling is Duch's description of young children that are like blank pages he could write upon (educate) in torture.

The few survivors of S-21 described the youngest jailers as being the most sadistic.

[angstlessk]

1. whaaatt? waterboarding was too cruel for THEM to use?

[InternalDialogue]

2. S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine

I recommend this documentary for more info on the guards and survivors of S21. The film's interviews are conducted by a survivor, and they include his questioning guards who had imprisoned and tortured him.

And to expand on Coventina's comment that the youngest jailers were the most sadistic, it's obvious from the interviews in the film that the young ones had stunning psychological disconnects with their past. They remembered their routines and their prisoners, but they seemed emotionally dead and completely unable to understand the horror they carried out. They recounted their experiences much as a factory worker might describe his or her job: Well, I did this, then I did this, then I went over here. No connection to the humans they were terrorizing.

[subterranean]

3. A waterboard is prominently featured at the S-21 prison museum

There's also a painting of waterboarding supposedly painted by a former prisoner.

Images here:
http://www.davidcorn.com/archives/2006/09/this_is_what_wa.php

This is what the Republicans are trying to defend.

[Marrah_G]

4. I knew a man who immigrated here after escaping and crossing the killing fields as a young teen

His story was so horrifying it's hard to wrap your brain around.