Man or monster? : the trial of a Khmer Rouge torturer / Alexander Laban Hinton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hinton, Alexander Laban, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Kang, Kech Ieu, 1942---Trials, litigation, etc.

Kang, Kech Ieu.

Kang, Kech Ieu, 1942-.

Tuol Sleng (Prison : Phnom Penh, Cambodia).

Trials (Crimes against humanity)--Cambodia.

Trials (Crimes against humanity).

Cambodia.

Local Subjects:

Tuol Sleng (Prison : Phnom Penh, Cambodia).

Genre:

Trials, litigation, etc.

Physical Description:

viii, 350 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2016.

Summary:

During the Khmer Rouge's brutal reign in Cambodia during the mid-to-late 1970s, a former math teacher named Duch served as the commandant of the S-21 security center, where as many as 20,000 victims were interrogated, tortured, and executed. In 2009 Duch stood trial for these crimes against humanity. While the prosecution painted Duch as evil, his defense lawyers claimed he simply followed orders. In Man or Monster? Alexander Hinton uses creative ethnographic writing, extensive fieldwork, hundreds of interviews, and his experience attending Duch's trial to create a nuanced analysis of Duch, the tribunal, the Khmer Rouge, and the after-effects of Cambodia's genocide. Interested in how a person becomes a torturer and executioner as well as the law's ability to grapple with crimes against humanity, Hinton adapts Hannah Arendt's notion of the "banality of evil" to consider how the potential for violence is embedded in the everyday ways people articulate meaning and comprehend the world. Man or Monster? provides novel ways to consider justice, terror, genocide, memory, truth, and humanity. Book jacket.

Contents:

The accused, fact sheet, public version-redacted

Monster

Comrade Duch's Abecedarian

Man (opening arguments)

Revolutionary (M-13 Prison)

Subordinate (establishment of S-21)

Cog (policy and implementation)

Commandant (functioning of S-21)

Master (torture and execution)

Erasure: Duch's apology

Torture, a collage

Villain (the civil parties)

Zealot (prosecution)

Scapegoat (defense)

The accused (trial chamber judgment).

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 335-344) and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Hinton, Alexander Laban. Man or monster?

ISBN:

9780822362586

0822362589

9780822362739

0822362732

OCLC:

953174406