Dunlop Treads Difficult Path

Author and Photographer Nic Dunlop has travelled through difficult territory. Driven in a search for clues, he has tried to discover what motivated the notorious Khmer Rouge executioner Comrade Duch (pronounced Doik) to oversee the torture and death of reportedly 20,000 men, women and children.

In his book The Lost Executioner, Dunlop tells of his extraordinary accidental discovery of Comrade Duch - the man who was in charge of S-21 (Tuol Sleng) - and who had stayed hidden for two decades under an assumed name and identity as an aid worker after the Pol Pot regime collapsed.

Julian Gearing of the Asia Times offers this book review of Nic Dunlop's work.

Only two prominent men are in prison - Duch and Ta Mok, aka The Butcher. Many others who are guilty of torture and murder are walking around free - ghosts of the past still stalking the people.
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Dunlop's personal journey into the heart of post-Pol Pot Cambodia is a revelation. The photographer can now rightly claim to be part of Cambodian history, the man who discovered Duch and helped in no small way to kick the struggling justice system into life. For his efforts, he won an award from the Johns Hopkins University for Excellence in International Journalism.
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Will justice be done in the upcoming tribunal in Phnom Penh? Dunlop expresses doubts. Near the end of the book he grows despondent about whether his efforts as a photographer to show the world the aftermath of this brutal era will come to anything. He questions whether his discovery of Duch and the man's resulting imprisonment will amount to anything.

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