S-21’s En to release memoir
Tue, 30 December 2014
Vong Sokheng



When prisoners were dragged into the photo room at S-21, the brutal Khmer Rouge torture facility, photographer Nhem En could offer little solace.

His life depended on staying emotionless and shooting the mug shots of each terrified prisoner exactly how his bosses wanted.

“Technical accuracy was essential, because I knew that my life would be in danger, if I was careless in my job.”

En’s account of his time as a photographer in S-21 comes in a memoir due for release in the New Year.

In Nhem En: The Khmer Rouge’s Photographer at S-21, the 54-year-old writes how he joined the Khmer Rouge at age 9 and was later sent to China to train as a photographer. He returned to an empty Phnom Penh when he was 14 years old and was put to work in the torture facility.

More than 12,000 people, including many Khmer Rouge cadres and a handful of foreigners, were killed after being tortured at S-21 between 1975 and 1979 under the watch of prison boss Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch. But En was aware of up to 400 staff at the facility – other cameramen included – also being killed, he wrote.

“They simply might have fallen asleep during their working hours.”

En himself was close to being murdered, he says in his book, over a negative he developed showing a blurred line across Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot’s left eye.

It was later discovered that the defect wasn’t his fault, but he still spent three months in exile at a rabbit farm in Meanchey district as a consequence.

En said yesterday that his book, co-written by Dara Duong, a Khmer Rouge survivor, provided a personal perspective of a regime that killed at least 1.7 million people.

“This book is not about politics. It is my personal [experiences]. I want my memoir to give some history,” he said.

The authors plan a second book, detailing En’s later years as a photographer for Khmer Rouge guerrillas.

En lives in Anlong Veng, where he defected to the government in 1996. Earlier this year, he stood down from his position of deputy district governor and later joined the Cambodia National Rescue Party.

S-21 Photographer’s Book Sales Banned at Museum

BY KHUON NARIM | MARCH 6, 2015
Former S-21 prison photographer Nhem En has been banned by the Culture Ministry from selling his new book inside the infamous Khmer Rouge security center, according to a letter from the ministry obtained Thursday.

In the February 23 letter to Mr. En—whose haunting photographs of S-21’s estimated 12,000 victims line the walls of what is now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum—the ministry cites, as reasons for the ban, the photographer’s dubious claims to victimhood and possible use of plagiarized photos in the book, “Nhem En’s Personal Memoir at S-21.”



“The ministry does not permit those who are not real victims to sell their work in Tuol Sleng prison,” the letter reads.

The letter also says it is unclear whether Nhem En actually took all the pictures he used in the book.

Speaking in a bookstore across the road from Tuol Sleng on Thursday, Mr. En said he had sought permission to sell his book inside the prison grounds so that he could meet and talk to tourists there.

He said that if he were not allowed to sell his memoirs there, former inmates Chum Mey and Bou Meng should also be banned from doing so.

“This is discrimination…. If they do not allow me to sell inside, then please ban all who are selling inside S-21, even those selling beverages,” he said.

“I want to ask: Are the only victims Chum Mey and Bou Meng? There are many victims nationwide,” he added.

Mr. En, who was a teenager when he was stationed at the prison in 1976, denied appropriating photographs that were not his and lamented the ban would have on his book sales.

“I was formerly at Tuol Sleng, so if I cannot meet with tourists, do I meet with ghosts? I am also a victim,” he said.

Thai Noraksathya, a spokesman for the Ministry of Culture, said officials decided to ban the sale of Mr. En’s book because it had not been established that he was a victim of the Khmer Rouge.

“We have not yet judged him to be a victim and he has not yet shown he is a victim,” Mr. Noraksathya said. “He was an official working for the regime.”

Mr. Mey, who sells his book, “Survivor,” from inside the razor-wire-topped walls of Tuol Sleng, said he supported the decision.

“[Mr. En] is a fake person, he is cadre…. He is not a victim, he was a subordinate of Duch,” Mr. Mey said, using the alias for Kaing Guek Eav, who oversaw the prison and was found guilty of crimes against humanity in 2010.

“I never saw him tortured at Tuol Sleng,” he added.