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    Facing the Torturer
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    Facing the Torturer
    Unavailable
    Facing the Torturer
    Ebook220 pages3 hours

    Facing the Torturer

    By Francois Bizot

    2.5/5

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    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this ebook

    An encounter with Duch, the most infamous mass-murderer alive today, by the author of the internationally acclaimed THE GATE
    In 1971, 30-year-old ethnographer François Bizot was captured by the Khmer Rouge and kept prisoner for three months in the Cambodian jungle, accused of being a CIA spy. His captor, Comrade Duch, eventually had him freed. It took Bizot decades to realise he owed his life to a man who, later in the Killing Fields regime, became one of Pol Pot's most infamous henchmen. As the head of the tuol Sleng S-21 jail, Duch personally oversaw the detention, systematic torture and execution of thousands of detainees. Duch's trial as a war criminal began in March 2009 and Bizot was the first witness to testify. In July 2010, Duch was sentenced to 35 years' imprisonment for the murder of an estimated 14,000 people. Unable to reconcile the young man who saved his life with the war criminal who terrorised and killed countless innocent people, Bizot attended Duch's trial and spent time with him in prison, trying to unearth whatever humanity Duch had left. If he was going to talk to anyone, it was Bizot, whom he still referred to as his 'friend'. At once a personal essay, a historical and philosophical meditation, and an eye-witness account, FACING tHE tORtURER will join a very short list of important books about man's personal responsibility in collective crimes.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers Australia
    Release dateOct 1, 2011
    ISBN9780730497363
    Unavailable
    Facing the Torturer
    Author

    Francois Bizot

    Francois Bizot is an ethnologist who has spent the greater part of his career studying South-East Asian Buddhism and has lived in various countries of the Indochinese peninsula since 1965. He has taught at the Sorbonne and is Professor Emeritus at the Ecole Française de l’Extrême Orient.

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    2.5/5

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    • 2/5
      Francois Bizot is a French ethnologist who was imprisoned for three months by the Khmer Rouge and ‘interrogated’ by Comrade Duch: Bizot later wrote The Gate, an account of his prison experiences. Duch, known as The Beast of Tuol Sleng, was tried for war crimes and yet, as Bizot discovers to his surprise in this rumination, his captor was capable of acts of humanity and a bond developed between the two men. The writing is eloquent and beautiful, an aesthetic but heartbreaking meander through the past – highly recommended for all who enjoy self-indulgent and agonized introspection and profound musings on the nature of good and evil.