WATCHING WAR CRIMES TRIAL

Courtroom building for the trials in Phnom Penh, built with foreign aid

When people think of Cambodian history, a few words usually come to mind: “Killing Fields” and “Khmer Rouge” top the list. After decades of impunity, the time has finally come for the ex-leaders of the Khmer Rouge to answer for their genocidal crimes.

Today I'm see a truly historical event. I'll be watching a trial for the most serious crime of all: "Crimes against humanity".

I'm attending this historical trial with my friend Sue, another American living in Cambodia. We arrive by tuk-tuk on the edge of Phnom Penh, and enter the ‘Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia’, (ECCC) an impressive judicial complex built solely for these trials. A large new yellow building with a Khmer style roof holds the courtroom. This complex also has a jail for those accused, so it's surrounded by a fence topped with barbed wire.

We enter through metal detectors; cell phones or cameras aren't allowed. (Darn!) Walking in, I find the room very wide, with blue movie theater style seats for those attending. It looks more like an auditorium than courtroom. Attendance is low; I count only about 115 people, mostly foreigners. Many more Cambodians attended in the beginning. But these trials are a long, slow process, and fewer attend these days.

The audience is separated from the proceedings by glass. I wonder if it makes those inside feel like zoo animals. That’s not far off, considering the crimes committed by those on trial. The glass is very thick; I wonder if it’s bulletproof. There are many Cambodians that would like to kill the defendants themselves, along with their lawyers.

Prime Minister Hun Sen is ex-Khmer Rouge! (photo: Wikipedia)

I grab a booklet titled, “An Introduction to The Khmer Rouge Trials”. The preface is given by Hun Sen, Cambodia's Prime Minister. He says,“During that time, over three million of our people lost their lives. They were our parents, our children, our relatives, our colleagues and our friends. Those of us who survived have lived for a quarter of a century bearing pain and grief for those we lost and being haunted by the nightmare of our own experiences.”

What Hun Sen fails to mention, is that during the genocide, he was a Khmer Rouge commander! His former membership in the Khmer Rouge is believed to be one reason why these trials were delayed, for years. It hasn't been proved that Hun Sen took part in war crimes during the Pol Pot era, but it hasn't been disproved either.  

The only reason these trials came about, was through international pressure. Hun Sen’s government couldn't hold fair trials on their own, and he also refused to allow the trials to be held at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, where it would have cost less. The Cambodian government demanded the trials held here. Cynics say that this was so the Cambodian government could make money off the trials. To ensure fairness, the international community demanded that a few foreign judges be included. As a result, the presiding justices are a mix of Khmer, and foreign judges.

On entering, I’m handed a headset and receiver to listen to the translations. Flags of the United Nations and Cambodia hang flat on the wall, with the ECCC seal between them. Looking at the participants, all lawyers and officials are wearing purple or black robes. Off to the right, seated alone, is an older Cambodian. I quickly recognize him. It's hard to believe it, but there he is.

Ex-prison warden Duch(photo:Wikipedia)

Duch!

I almost gasp. Duch was the warden of S-21, also known as Tuol Sleng, the former prison and torture center that I had visited. This man is responsible for the murder of 17,000 Cambodians, and he's seated less than 30 feet away from me!

I'm surprised to see that he’s so short. For a man who was one of the 20th century's biggest terrors, he’s really rather small. He wears a white, short sleeved dress shirt, and he’s a little chubby. Unlike his former captives, he’s not going hungry in prison. He's been getting fat on ECCC prison food.

Duch is not his real name. Like most wartime Khmer Rouge cadres, he changed his name when he joined the radical movement. His real name is Kaing Gueck Eav, born in 1945 in Kampong Thom Province. A gifted math student, he once won 2nd place in a national mathematics contest. He later became a math teacher, joining the Communist Party in 1970. In the 1980’s he left the Khmer Rouge and disappeared. A western journalist found him in the 1990’s, and he was finally arrested in 1999.

As Pol Pot is already dead, four other top Khmer Rouge leaders will be tried later, after Duch. These include Nuon Chea, former head of the National Assembly, Ieng Sary, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, his wife Ieng Thirith, former Minister of Social Affairs, and Khieu Samphan, former Head of State. Four of the five are charged with war crimes, and all are charged with crimes against humanity. 

Photos at S-21 prison of some of the women and girls Duch ordered executed

At 9am, there’s a loud electronic beep, and everyone stands. Seven judges file in, all wearing red robes. Two Cambodian guards enter, sitting on either side of the accused. And the proceedings begin. Lawyers do most of the talking, speaking on the slow side to make it easier for translators. Translations are available in Khmer, English and French. I'm impressed by the translations, though it's a very slow process. No wonder these trials are going to take years.

Today the lawyers are questioning a witness that spoke about refugees that fled the Khmer Rouge, seeking safe haven in Vietnam. Apparently, the Vietnamese government had forcibly repatriated some refugees back to Cambodia. His testimony is needed, because after those refugees were forcibly returned the Khmer Rouge executed them.

As testimony proceeds, Duch agrees with the witness's recollections. Wearing glasses, he looks much like the teacher he was before he joined the Khmer Rouge. As the former prison warden speaks, he waves his hands for emphasis, speaking of the “life and death conflict” between Vietnamese and Cambodian Communists.

Duch said, “I didn’t think of Pol Pot as a patriot. He had blood on his hands.” And Duch didn't? I thought that was an odd thing for him to say, since he'd signed thousands of death warrants with his own hand.

Later that day, he seemed to correct himself. “My hands were stained with the blood of S-21,” he said. Duch doesn’t deny his part in the genocide. A unique part of Duch's story, is that in the 1990's he converted to Christianity. His conversion seems to have played a role in his confession. He's the only defendant in these trials that is pleading guilty.

Duch speaks at his trial for crimes against humanity (photo: Wikipedia)

While we watch the trial, Sue recognizes Vann Nath, a Cambodian sitting behind the prosecutor. He's one of the very few survivors of S-21. His testimony against Duch will be strong evidence. As I watch, Duch speaks animatedly with his hands. I notice something else: he’s missing a finger on one hand. I wonder, did having a maimed hand, make Duch more brutal?

Just about everyone speaks calmly during the trial, until a Cambodian lawyer speaks up. He questions Duch heatedly, asking about Cambodians deported from Vietnam. It's stated that Vietnamese officials exchanged buckets of salt for refugees, before they were executed. So Khmer refugees were literally not worth their weight in salt to the Vietnamese government.

It's shocking to learn terminology that the Khmer Rouge used in those violent days. Lawyers and witnesses discuss a Khmer Rouge meeting, where they spoke of ‘smashing’ people in the army. Of course ‘smash’ meant 'kill'. Then Duch speaks up - he was at that meeting, and agrees to fill us in. It's chilling testimony; it's as though I'm listening to a top Nazi talk about the meetings for the final solution. They spoke of, “getting rid of enemies and traitors”. Duch doesn't sugar coat his part in this either. Regarding one detainee, Duch says, “I ordered people to beat him, and get a confession.”

As the day's proceedings close, the judges exit the court room. As they do, Duch gives each judge a Buddhist bow. How times have changed; he could have been executed for doing that back during the Khmer Rouge days.

Months later, Duch's trial finally ends, and he's sentenced to 35 years in prison. Given that he had already been in jail for so long, he would be able to walk free after 18 years. Duch appealed his sentence, saying that he was only a ‘junior officer’ following orders. His appeal outraged victims, and the prosecution, who said the sentence was too lenient. After hearing the appeal, the judges agreed with the victims. Duch was re-sentenced, to serve the rest of his life in prison.   

WOMAN'S STRENGTH SURVIVES GENOCIDE

Palla, survivor of the Khmer Rouge

I met Palla in a former prison, and torture center. We talked in the courtyard of 'S-21', a former Khmer Rouge prison in Cambodia, known as today as the Tuol Sleng genocide museum. A Khmer woman in her 50's, her hair is pulled back and parted. But what really stands out is her face, which has the look of a woman who has struggled to survive.

I sat down on a bench with Palla to learn more about the prison, but her own story was also gripping. As a flock of birds hopped about on a nearby railing, her story unfolded.

Palla was just a girl from military family in the eastern town of Svay Rieng when the war with the Khmer Rouge began. One brother was a Navy captain, another in the Air Force. As the war raged, she eventually moved to Phnom Penh in the early 1970’s for safety. 

When the war ended in 1975, she was only 17, a young bride when the communist Khmer Rouge entered the capital.  Folks were initially happy, as the war was finally over. But the Khmer Rouge immediately forced everyone to leave the city, and walk into the countryside. Palla says that she didn’t even have time to go home and pack up belongings to take with her. Additionally, the Khmer Rouge forced people of different neighborhoods to march out of town in different directions, so her family was split up immediately. So they marched to totally different parts of the country. She never saw some of her relatives again.

Palla's first husband was killed by the Khmer Rouge shortly after the war ended. As an Army soldier, he was targeted for execution. Her first daughter, and her father, died of starvation in Khmer Rouge labor camps. 4 of her 10 brothers and sisters died during the Khmer Rouge genocide. Her mother didn’t survive either. 

Barbed wire surrounds former Khmer Rouge prison and torture center

Somehow, Palla learned how all of her relatives were killed by the Khmer Rouge. She told me how this one was clubbed to death, that one was drowned, that one was killed by bamboo pole strikes to the back of the head and neck. If the Khmer Rouge cadres had learned of Palla's background, she would have been killed too. But immediately upon leaving Phnom Penh, everyone in her family changed their names. She shortened her name from ‘Palla’ to ‘La’.

Under orders, she did all kinds of manual, forced labor during those years of communism. She labored to make dikes, and canals. She worked on farm communes, planting and harvesting rice and corn by hand. To work different projects, the Khmer Rouge forced her to move back and forth from the east side of Cambodia to the west. Sometimes she walked for days. When she was lucky, she was transported by truck, boat or train.

When the Khmer Rouge were finally forced out of power, she returned to Phnom Penh. One surviving brother became a policeman. Palla's sister used to be a French teacher, and she became the first director of this grim museum of genocide. Having that position, she was able to give Palla a job here at Tuol Sleng as well. Palla has worked here since 1979.

Palla cleaned up the pool of blood left in this torture room, but left some blood spots as evidence

Palla's first job was cleaning this wretched place, not a pleasant task. When she first cleaned out the wooden and brick prison cells that I had visited, Palla had to remove scorpions and lice! 

Even worse, the interrogations rooms had pools of blood left on the floors from their final torture victims, and she was responsible for cleaning them all! Although she cleaned up of most of the dried blood, she left some blood spots on the floors for future evidence.

Palla married again after the war, and had three more children. But her second marriage wouldn't last either. In 1984, in the midst of the Vietnamese war with the Khmer Rouge, her husband left to escape to Thailand. She never heard from him again. Palla thinks that he’s dead. Like so many others that tried to escape to Thailand, he may have died in the minefields, though she may never know for sure. One of her sons also died years later in a motorcycle accident.

After the war, Palla took classes to learn English. Eventually she become more than a cleaner here, she also became a guide for the genocide museum. She is also a witness, as this prison has additional family connections for her. When written prison records left behind by the Khmer Rouge were examined, Palla learned that her brother and sister-in-law had been imprisoned here. Her brother had been an Air Force pilot, before he was eventually captured and brought to Tuol Sleng with his wife. They both were executed. They had found the document with her brother's signed confession, obtained through torture, like so many others sentenced to death here.

Crudely cut doorways between prison rooms

Palla tells me that she had a dream last night about her father. She misses her daughter too, the one that died in the famine brought on by the Khmer Rouge. She sometimes cries, because she has enough food to eat now, and back during the famine her daughter didn’t. Palla had no medicine to give her daughter back then either. She says that now medicine is available, and cheap in Cambodia.

Affected by her story, I tell Palla, “I think you are the strongest woman I have ever met.”

She says back to me, “They saw me strong. But I have broken everything. My heart, stomach, eye.” Palla has to take a heart medication these days, and also lost vision in one eye five years ago, to a cataract. She gets by ok these days, but she can’t afford cataract surgery.

Still, Palla has a positive outlook on life, as she's a survivor, and far better off than before. She currently lives with one of her surviving daughters and grandchildren.

“Everything now better,” she tells me. “I have food, rice. I have better than during Khmer Rouge (years.) I don’t have car or motorcycle, but I don’t care. My life is now better." 

One of the buildings in Tuol Sleng prison, where Palla works

As I leave Tuol Sleng, I'm glad that the last thing I remember about this prison, is Palla's smile after I gave her a $20 tip. 

She deserves more.

THE CONDEMNED INNOCENTS

Photos of women and girls executed at S-21 (aka Tuol Sleng) in Phnom Penh

Jaw dropping. This is unbelievable, and not in a good way. 

I'm in the infamous ex-prison known as S-21, built by the communists in a Phnom Penh school. I've already seen prison cells, and the awful interrogation rooms used for torture. It's no wonder that several ex-Khmer Rouge leaders are now on trial for crimes against humanity.

I enter the last prison building, and this schoolroom is full of photos. There are enlarged 8X10 pictures of prisoners, each taken as they arrived to S-21. The photos are mounted on both sides of large easels. There are 140 on each, with 10 easels in the room. Face after face after face, adding up to 1,400 photos of people who were imprisoned here, and murdered. And that’s just this room. In the next room are more pictures, and the next room, and the next. How disturbing. 

Most of the prisoners have some kind of ID number pinned to their shirt, the black communist uniform all were forced to wear. All the men have their arms tied behind their back.

Male inmates of S-21, later executed

Most photos were shot mugshot style, but a few are very graphic, showing the victims after they’ve been tortured to death. A few photos show the unlucky foreigners that were killed here. The Khmer Rouge were so xenophobic, that being a foreigner could bring a death sentence.

I look at another section of photos. These are all women. Nearly all of these ladies have their hair cut in a bob, the hairstyle forced on them by the Khmer Rouge. A couple women hold their child in their arms. Most adults have a stoic look on their face, which was the basic face of survival in those years. Others show worry, fear, or sadness. A few have faces of defiance. Most knew that they would be dead soon. When someone was accused of being a ‘traitor’, Khmer Rouge justice didn’t stop with the accused. His wife and children often ended up here too.

The most disturbing group of photos, is the whole section of photos of children. Boys, girls, there are children of all ages, even toddlers. Some of them have the serious faces of children who have seen too much. Others look at the camera with that pure, adorable look of innocence that all children have. One mother poses for her mugshot holding her baby. 

None of them survived. They were all killed. 

A morbid room has a series of skulls on display. These skulls have tell tale fractures, or bullet holes. A caption beneath one reads like a line from one of those strangely popular American TV shows about forensic police investigators. But this isn't TV, this is reality. The caption reads:

4. Cranium of a man, 20 – 40 years old.
Gunshot wound of right superior parietal convexity (top of the head) with the bullet passing downward into the skull through the brain and exit to the left of the foramen magnum (base of the neck where the spinal cord emerges from brain). [Catalogue No. TSL15, 2A50695].

The faces of innocent children that were executed by the Khmer Rouge

I leave this moving display, and return to the old school yard. It's now a fenced-in prison compound. There used to be several layers of fencing, now there are only two. It's topped by several layers of barbed wire, which kept desperate prisoners from escaping.

During school days children played here, and in the yard is a tall frame of what may have been a swing set. Below it are 2 very large ceramic jars, like those used for storing water. A sign explains how these were used for their evil means.

THE GALLOWS
This pole with cables attached to it had been used for the student to conduct their exercise. The Khmer Rouge utilized this place as interrogation room. The interrogators tied both hands of the prisoners to the back by a rope and lift the prisoners upside down. They did like this until the prisoners lost consciousness. Then they dipped the prisoner’s head into a jar of smelly, filthy water, which they normally used as fertilizer for the crops in the terrace outside. By doing so, the victims quickly regain consciousness, and that the interrogators could continue their interrogation.

By their last year in power, the Khmer Rouge had turned against its own members in a cannibalistic manner. The paranoid regime began to arrest, torture and execute many cadres and soldiers in its own ranks. These even included some of the torturers and guards who worked here. Many of them became victims of this very place. Some of the S-21 torturers, were tortured here in S-21, in the same rooms where they had tortured others. Is that justice?

Gallows used to torture inmates during questioning

Although the interrogators/torturers were men, the survivors say that there was once a female interrogator. They say that she had left S-21, after she went insane. 

But some of the other torturers survived. S-21 was also only one of many prisons and torture centers across Cambodia, so many torturers fled and survived the war. None of them have ever been arrested or tried for their crimes.

Only one key figure has been brought to justice so far. The warden of this prison, known as Duch, has been put on trial for crimes against humanity. I will soon attend his trial.

S-21 is now called the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Like the Nazi death camps, this horrible place is being preserved to teach future generations about the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge.

A young visiting British backpacker expressed his dismay as he left this museum. “My parents didn’t even tell me about this,” I heard him say, still shocked. “They probably didn’t even know about it.”

Former school building housed condemned prisoners from 1975 - 1978

But I'll never forget it. Leaving Tuol Sleng, I step back out into Phnom Penh, leaving the genocide behind. 

Or do I? As I see adult Cambodians going about their daily affairs, I’m reminded that every single person old enough to remember the Khmer Rouge years, has been left traumatized. They personally witnessed the genocide that I've just learned about. They survived, but they all lost friends and family. 

On the opposite end, some of the men here in this city, are former Khmer Rouge soldiers themselves. They took part in the killings and other genocidal atrocities, and they still walk free. 

It really makes me wonder, how many ex-Khmer Rouge have driven me around this city? How many of them have I met in shops, or greeted on the street?

Never mind. I really don't want to know.

TORTURE ROOMS IN KHMER ROUGE PRISON

Cramped cells in the S-21 prison

I’m in a high school courtyard in Phnom Penh, but this is no ordinary school. With several three story high buildings, there is room here for over a thousand students.

Or prisoners.

After the communist Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh in 1975, they converted this school into a prison called 'S-21'. It is today known as Tuol Sleng. Once a place of youth and learning, this school was transformed into a place of unspeakable torture and inhumanity. I had already seen the down sides of ‘revolution’ in neighboring Vietnam and Laos, but nowhere were the communists more evil and murderous than here in Cambodia.

Of the more than 17,000 people who were imprisoned here at Tuol Sleng, only 7 prisoners survived. All the thousands of others who were brought here were executed, tortured to death, or died in their cells from disease or mistreatment. The only reason that those 7 inmates were allowed to live, was because they happened to possess skills that their captors could use. One was an artist, forced to carve busts of their maniac leader Pol Pot. Another was a photographer, who took mug shots of doomed prisoners. 

Dreading what I'm going to see here, I enter the former school, walking into what once was a classroom. But the desks are gone, replaced by several sets of poorly built prison cells. Some are made of wood, others made of brick. There's no electricity; the only light peeks in from windows and small vents, leaving dark shadows across the room. I step into one of the eerie cells to get the feel of the place. Claustrophobic isn't the word; I’ve been in closets bigger than this. This cell is so small, there isn't enough room to lie down. For the prisoners it was far worse, they had to share these cells with other inmates.

Inmates were inhumanely shackled together by their ankles, to these metal poles

Stepping back out, I find a door has been knocked out through the school room wall's center, revealing another room full of cells. No door frame was installed; jagged brick and mortar was left exposed. Looking through, I see another crude door cut into the next room's far wall, and the next. This crudely cut hallway made it easier for the Khmer Rouge to police their doomed prisoners.

Exiting this gloomy scene, I head upstairs to the main detention rooms. On this level there there are no cells. Prisoners' ankles were locked in leg shackles, attached directly to a long steel pole on the floor. This forced prisoners to lie on the tiled floor tightly together, side by side, all day and night. This kept them immobilized; a method of confinement learned from French colonials. To relieve themselves, they had to use a bucket where they lay. Hygiene was non-existent; this led to rampant diarrhea. Shackled to these poles, inmates sometimes couldn't get a bucket, leaving them to lie in their own feces. They were released from these shackles only for interrogation and torture.

Barbed wire on upper walkways was to prevent prisoner suicides

I leave the room for the walkway, which like most Asian schoolhouses, is open to the exterior. Here I find barbed wire, stretched from the railings to the ceiling. The barbed wire was installed to prevent the prisoners from jumping to their deaths. Some of the poor souls here chose suicide, rather than continuing to endure the torture and horrific conditions of S-21.

On average, the prisoners of Tuol Sleng survived here for 1 - 3 months, until their 'interrogation' was complete. By that time, repeated torture had forced them into confessing to crimes, real or imagined. Then they were taken away to be executed in the killing fields.

At times S-21 was packed with prisoners beyond capacity. There were occasions when truckloads of prisoners arrived, and the prison was already overfilled. So the trucks never unloaded. The prisoners were just sent off for immediate execution.

Entering an adjacent school building, I find another former class room. In happier times, eager students were questioned by their teachers here. But after the communists took over, there was questioning in this room of a different kind. The Khmer Rouge called it an interrogation room. What it really was used for, was torture.

Torture room used by Khmer Rouge, with cat sleeping under the bed

The horrors wroght by the Khmer Rouge finally came to light in 1979, when they fled Phnom Penh ahead of the advancing Vietnamese Army. When Vietnamese troops first captured this prison, they were appalled by what they saw. Entering this very room, they found the mutilated body of a man lying on a bed, his leg still shackled to the frame. On the floor beneath the bed was a pool of blood. In the next room, they found a similar gruesome scene. And the next room, and the next. In all, there were 14 corpses in this building, and all had been tortured to death. One of them was a woman. Each was left lying where they had died, as the torturers and guards had fled the city. Before the Vietnamese soldiers removed the bodies, they photographed each gory scene; a photo showing the gruesome scene found in this room is on the wall. The unnamed torture victims are buried in the school courtyard.

This sad room is now eerily quiet and calm. Except for the corpse, most of what was originally found in this room was left right where it was found. The bed is still here, with a bamboo mat stretched across it. There’s an ammunition case - prisoners used it as a toilet. There's a shovel, used as a torture implement. Looking closer on the floor, is another disturbing sight. Spots of blood stains, left from the room’s final victim.

This room may be the most evil place I've ever seen. Unspeakable acts took place here. It is truly unfathomable, that any man could do this to his fellow man. A sign posted outside lists the 10 rules that prisoners had to follow during interrogations. Presuming the prisoner's guilt, numbers 6, 9 and 10, are chillingly brutal.

Torture rooms seen at the left, the last victims were buried in the school courtyard

THE SECURITY OF REGULATION
1. you must answer accordingly to my questions – Don’t turn them away.
2. Don’t try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that You are strictly prohibited to contest me.
3. Don’t be fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.
4. you must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.
5. Don’t tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.
6. While getting lashes or electrification, you must not cry at all
7. Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. when I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting
8. Don’t make any pretext about Kampuchea Krom (Lower Cambodia) in order to hide your secret or traitor.
9. If you don’t follow all the above rules, you shall get many lashes of electric wire.
10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either 10 lashes or 5 shocks of electric discharge.

Of all 17,000 prisoners, only these 7 men survived (museum photo)

The windows of the interrogation rooms, are different from others in the prison. Unlike others that only had French shutters, the interrogation rooms all had glass windows. This was because when the prisoners were being tortured here, their screams of pain and agony could be heard throughout the prison. So they installed glass windows to make the screams less audible.

The other torture rooms, have similar scenes with similar furniture. Beds, chains, and primitive torture implements. Each has an enlarged photo on the wall, showing the graphic scene of how the prisoner's bloody corpse was found here on the final day. 

One room has a strange difference. For some reason, a stray cat is lying under the foot of the bed, sound asleep, at peace. 

The old school and former prison is now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

'HANOI HILTON' PRISON AND SENATOR MCCAIN

Entrance to Hoa Lo Prison, aka 'The Hanoi Hilton'

Future Senator McCain, as a young prisoner of war (Source: Hoa Lo Museum)

I’m heading down Hai Ba Trung, one of Hanoi’s busy downtown streets. Motorbikes and buses buzz by, until I turn on a quiet side street, finding a walled old colonial complex. Reaching the gate, a French arch over double doors reads, ‘Maison Centrale’. This entrance gate is misleadingly pleasant in appearance.

Upon passing inside, I find forbidding hallways, and dark rooms with steel doors. Electric fencing across the rooftop gives away the purpose of this place. This wasn’t just any little 'maison', this was a prison! Located in downtown Hanoi, this is the infamous former prison known as Hoa Lo. It is better known in the US by the name that American Prisoners of War gave it: "The Hanoi Hilton'.

Dark cells in the prison's 'death row' - Hoa Lo Prison is now a museum

Within these dismal walls, hundreds of American POW’s were held captive, as the war dragged on for longer than anyone expected. Hoa Lo happens to be a prison where the Vietnam War’s most famous prisoner of war was held captive. That prisoner was a Navy pilot, by the name of Lt. John McCain.

Flying a bombing mission over Hanoi in 1967, McCain’s A-4 aircraft was struck by a missile. Ejecting as his jet spun downward, his helmet and oxygen mask were blown off. Both of his arms and a leg were broken. He landed in Hanoi’s Truc Bach Lake, and barely able to move from his injuries, he was pulled from the water by the Vietnamese. In a rage from the deadly air attacks, McCain was beaten, and stabbed with a bayonet.

Brought to a prison and left in a bare cell, McCain was denied medical treatment. He nearly died. Then the

Old aerial view of Hoa Lo Prison (Source: Hoa Lo Museum)

Vietnamese military learned that his father was a Navy admiral. Deciding  that McCain was more valuable to them alive then dead, they finally gave him medical treatment. They hoped to use him for propaganda purposes. This didn’t stop them from mistreating him later, and during the next 5 1/2 years, he was tortured and beaten numerous times. Years later when became a US Senator, he spoke up repeatedly against the use of torture, since he had survived it himself in this prison.

French colonials imprisoned the Vietnamese in leg restraints

Hoa Lo prison was originally built by the French back in 1896. During colonial years the inmates here were Vietnamese revolutionaries and criminals. As bad as it was during the American years, conditions were even worse when it was a French prison. Originally built to hold less than 500 inmates, it was later packed to hold nearly 2,000.

Entering a long, open prison room, I learn how French guards dealt with the problem of overcrowding. On both sides of the room are long wooden platforms, where Vietnamese prisoners were lined up one after the other. Running lengthwise on these platforms are leg stocks, and the prisoners were restrained with one, or both of their feet locked inside. This way they were forced to either sit, or lay down in one spot for nearly the entire day. Since the prison is now a museum, emaciated dummies have been placed in the stocks to demonstrate the effect. It looks like something out of a cruel, 19th century slave ship.     

Depiction of French torturing Vietnamese in the prison

 
Most of the Hoa Lo museum is dedicated to Vietnamese prisoners who fought the French, and for some Vietnamese inmates, their punishment here was final. Entering another grim room, I come upon a guillotine. This isn’t some side show reproduction either, this instrument of death is genuine. Invented during the terrors of the French revolution, the colonials brought the guillotine to Vietnam, and it was used in this prison to execute murderers and revolutionaries. Down a dark adjacent hall, depressing brick prison cells make up the section which was Hanoi’s death row.

Stepping into an inner courtyard, I happen upon a bas relief depicting the torture of Vietnamese prisoners here. After North Vietnam won its independence from France in 1954, the communists took over Hoa Lo. A decade later, the Vietnamese would use some of those same torture techniques that had been inflicted on them, on American prisoners held here. There is no bas relief depicting that.

Heading for a corner of the prison, I find the smallest cells of all. I open the creaky steel door, and look inside. Small, dark and empty, the cell is

Conditions were inhumane in these cells for solitary confinement

totally without furniture. With very little light, it is practically a dungeon. These were for solitary confinement, and the shutters were usually kept closed in the summer, making the heat stifling. For the Vietnamese, and the Americans who languished here, these cells were despair at its worst.

As if these cells weren’t bad enough, the communists occasionally restrained McCain and other prisoners here by their feet. Just inside the door is the room’s only feature; metal leg irons on the floor. When prisoners were locked into these, conditions were filthy, since prisoners had no choice but to relieve themselves where they sat. The concrete floor is relatively clean now, but at prison camps across Vietnam, American POWs were often not allowed to bathe for days or weeks at a time.

Most of the museum is dedicated to Vietnamese who suffered here, but two rooms have displays on American prisoners. As usual, their propaganda claims that the Americans were treated well here, and any mistreatment of POWs is completely omitted.

There are some intriguing photos here. An old black and white propaganda photo shows Vietnamese troops parading American POWs through Hanoi streets, while citizens look on. I wonder if Vietnamese even realize today, that parading around war prisoners is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Upon one wall, is a photo of the prisoner who almost became President of the United States: young Lieutenant John McCain. I have to hand it to McCain, he could have very easily died here in captivity, but he looks strong in this picture. If they were attempting to get McCain’s photo to look like a gloomy mugshot, they failed completely. Blonde and unshaven, he looks serious, even defiant. He looks more like a college linebacker than a prisoner. A display case contains what it claims is McCain’s flight suit, but this is unproven with the name patch removed.

Leaving the prison, I return to the same neighborhood on a later day. Entering an impressive high rise, I find a modern café on the ground floor. Buying a juice, I grab a seat, and take advantage of their free internet. Out in the lobby, a pair of pretty Vietnamese ladies hand out fliers to promote cell phones. Men wearing suits and ties catch the elevator, on their way to business meetings. It’s a picture of thriving capitalism, and it all happens to be located on land that was once part of the Hoa Lo prison.

As capitalism in Vietnam took off in the 1990’s, the government realized that this big former prison was located on very valuable downtown land. So the majority of the prison was torn down, and two modern buildings named the ‘Hanoi Towers’ were constructed in their place. Only one wing of the former Hoa Lo prison still remains, and it’s now the museum.

Ex-POW Capt Peterson later became ambassador to Vietnam!

Where once there were old brick cells and prison turf, there is now a towering building full of office space and retail. It doesn’t seem possible, but on the very same land where John McCain’s dirty prison cell once stood, you can now rent a serviced apartment in a 25 story building, starting at  $3000 per month! It’s an outrageous price for such a poor country, but at least it’s progress. To replace a dark, dilapidated old prison with two new commercial buildings, makes for excellent progress anywhere.

More important than what happened to those prison buildings, is what happened to the men who survived here. One of those POWs, Air Force Capt. Pete Peterson later joined the State Department. After diplomatic relations were re-established in the 1990s, this former prisoner of the Hanoi Hilton returned to Hanoi. He was America’s first Ambassador to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

For John McCain, it may have been the twisted turn of events and injuries that he survived in Hanoi, that brought him to politics. If his high speed ejection and subsequent abuse had not caused him permanent injuries, he may have remained a naval officer for life like his father before him. But since he could no longer be a pilot and was left partially disabled, McCain later left the Navy and entered politics where he remains today. Despite the torture and mistreatment he endured here, McCain has admirably not held a grudge against Vietnam. As a US Senator, he supported improved relations, and he voted in favor of normalizing diplomatic relations with Vietnam.

Over the years Senator McCain returned to Vietnam repeatedly, and these days, he advocates improved military relations. He most recently returned in 2009, when he again toured the Hoa Lo prison, accompanied by two other US Senators. Before leaving the place where he almost lost his life, he signed the museum’s guestbook. His message: “Best wishes.”

 

Old prison in foreground, new high rise beyond

Young ladies promote mobile phones on former prison property, now a commercial center