IT'S hard not to be shaken by the testimony emerging from Cambodia's genocide tribunal.
On trial for crimes against humanity is Duch. He was the commander of Tuol Sleng, the Khmer Rouge's most notorious prison-cum-torture centre, also known as S-21.
Of the 15,000 prisoners to enter Tuol Sleng, fewer than 10 are said to have survived. Over the past couple of weeks of the months-long trial, some of the survivors have recounted their experiences to the court. Among them:
* Mr Van Nath, 63, tearfully described the horrid conditions and minuscule food rations at S-21, saying he would be shackled together with 20 or 30 other prisoners, eating his twice-daily teaspoons of gruel next to dead bodies. The prisoners were so hungry, he said, they ate insects that fell to them from the ceiling. "I even thought eating human flesh would be a good meal," he told the court.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8123541.stm
* Mr Chum Mey, 79, spoke of 12 straight days of "interrogation", during which time his toenails were twisted and ripped off his toes with pliers. He said he couldn't walk normally for a month. He said guards would place live wires on his earlobes, and shock him into unconsciousness.
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2009070126839/National-news/Tuol-Sleng-victim-recalls-abuse.html
* Mr Phork Khan, 57, told the court of how he was taken from Tuol Sleng to be bludgeoned to death in the "killing fields" (most executions were done with a club in order to save bullets). He was beaten unconscious and left for dead. But he awoke hours later, bloody and covered by reeking corpses. The stench was so bad, he said, he almost passed out again. But he managed to crawl out and was found later by liberating Vietnamese forces, floating down a river on a plank.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hod9D1rTQHqKfg0YcfbqJIqLCF0g
These tales of brutality strike a particular chord with me, as I recently returned from the scene of these horrific crimes.
The term "genocide tourism" is tossed around somewhat derisively for people like me who travel to foreign lands, allegedly exploiting past atrocities for personal macabre thrills.
I find this attitude ignorant and close-minded. There is a common argument that we must remember and memorialise awful events so that they will happen "never again". That's valid, but also, I think, too simplistic -- a museum in Cambodia is unlikely to stop murder in Darfur.
To me, immersing oneself in unfathomable realities like genocide is an important way of confronting head-on the dark depths to which humanity can plunge. If we don't force ourselves to deal directly with our most base capabilities, no matter how uncomfortable, we betray our responsibility to understand what it means to be human.
Toul Sleng, which is now a museum, lies right in the heart of Phnom Penh. From outside the gate it still looks just like what it once was: a high school.
The first set of classrooms-turned-torture-chambers are hauntingly minimalist. A single black-and-white photograph hangs on the wall depicting the room as it was when the Khmer Rouge fled, with a ghostly corpse, most likely tortured to death, splayed out on slats on a metal bed.
That same rusty bed frame now sits in the middle of the room, with shackles at its foot and a corroded bedpan below. The black-and-yellow checkered floors are still speckled with blood stains.
Much of the rest of the museum consists of rows of photographs of the condemned. I tried to peer into each pair of eyes of the men, women and emaciated children, searching for even a fleeting glimpse of the unspeakable things they'd seen.
Most of them are filled with terror and infinite pain. But some still glimmer with inextinguishable vitality, even grinning in what seems like a poignant act of defiance.
Prisoners who survived interrogations were trucked outside the city to Choeung Ek, the best known of the countless killing fields scattered across the country. Excavated mass graves there are now grassy pits, like cavernous scars on the earth.
Behind the Buddhist stupa, a monument containing some 5,000 skulls of the deceased, is the Killing Tree. Soldiers would bash the heads of children against its trunk and discard the bodies in a nearby pit. Tatters of tiny clothing still cling to its base.
My cousin, who has lived in Phnom Penh for a year and a half and who I was visiting there, remarked at Tuol Sleng that she was glad to see so many Cambodians there. It's not just the tourists who feel the need to retread the dark corners of man's past.
During his trial, Duch -- a born-again Christian whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav -- has begged his victims' forgiveness and wept for his sins. Sympathy might be hard to come by, and justice could prove even more elusive.
But by reliving the atrocity through voices of the victims and relics of pain and suffering, we can all hope to understand something about ourselves.