People I've Known Who Died Violent Deaths, and Deserved It: Part I
Son Sen: the Khmer Rouge's Heinrich Himmler
Son Sen was the Heinrich Himmler of Cambodia. He was head of the communist Khmer Rouge regime's own Gestapo, the Santebal, and oversaw that short-lived regime's death factory, Tuol Sleng Prison. I sat across Son Sen at UN-sponsored peace negotiations for a year-and-a-half. He was the most chilling human being I've ever encountered.
"Democratic Kampuchea" was one of the most murderous regimes in modern history. During its 1975-79 misrule, some 1.7 million Cambodians were starved and worked to death or were outright murdered, the greatest genocide since WWII. It is estimated that 17,000-20,000 were brutally tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng, now a Genocide Museum. Son Sen played a direct role in designing its torture chambers and overall operations. Whole families were rounded up as enemies of the state, and methodically processed through his murder machine. The routine was to photograph each victim, strip them, torture them into admitting the most outlandish crimes, recording it all in great detail, and then killing them. This was done by a number of ways, all designed to save on precious ammunition. The most common method was a lethal blow to the head with an iron bar or shovel; suffocation by placing a plastic bag over the victim's head was another. Others were bled to death, their blood harvested for transfusions to wounded KR soldiers. Still others were used for grisly medical experiments.
The body count grew so high so fast, that the administrators took to trucking prisoners 15 kilometers out of the capital for execution at the Choueng Ek killing fields, their bodies dumped in mass graves. Touring the Tuol Sleng museum today is a chilling experience. Victims stare back hauntingly from the walls in photos taken just prior to their execution. All manner of torture implements are on display, ranging from electrified metal bed frames to branding irons to pliers for pulling out fingernails to waterboarding racks. If there ever was a manmade hell on earth since Auschwitz, this was it. Among foreigners killed were at least four Americans, three Frenchmen, two Australians, a Briton and a New Zealander -- most yachtsmen who accidentally wandered into Cambodian waters and taken prisoner. Of its 20,000 inmates, only seven are known to have survived. The prison commandant was tried recently and sentenced to 35 years imprisonment. Ironically, Comrade "Duch" had converted to Christianity and worked for Christian NGO's for years prior to his arrest.
Like his cohorts in the Khmer Rouge leadership, Son Sen was French-educated. He showed up at meetings of the UN-sponsored talks at the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh dressed in spiffy Thai silk suits, accompanied by KR Foreign Minister Khieu Samphan, a mild mannered, pasty-faced accomplice in murder. Son Sen had the face of a merciless killer, stone cold and utterly devoid of humanity. His few attempts to smile came off as evil sneers. His eyes appeared dead. His body language was reptilian. I once included in one of my regular cables to Washington reporting on these meetings a paragraph on how Son Sen spent the entire time methodically picking apart a caviar hors d'ouevre with a toothpick, carefully separating each part and then crushing them into a blotchy mess. I thought that small act spoke a lot about this man.
On June 10, 1997, Son Sen and thirteen members of this family, including women and children, were shot to death on orders from the dying Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot after getting wind his former security chief was seeking to surrender to the central government. The bodies were then run over repeatedly by a truck. Photos were taken of the carnage for Pol Pot to see. The KR leader died apparently of natural causes ten months later, his body burned on a heap of trash.
Sic semper tyrannis.