During the Khmer Rouge regime over 12,000 Cambodian were tortured and bludgeoned to death in Toul Sleng prison. Only 12 survived. George Walsh recalls meeting Cambodia’s most famous artist and survivor of Toul Sleng prison, Van Nath.

During the Khmer Rouge regime over 12,000 Cambodian were tortured and bludgeoned to death in Toul Sleng prison. Only 12 survived. George Walsh recalls meeting Cambodia’s most famous artist and survivor of Toul Sleng prison, Van Nath.

As a young boy Vann Nath dreamed of becoming a painter not necessar­ily a famous one but like many of us he wanted to be able to earn a living doing what he loved. Today he is unarguably Cambodia’s most famous painter but known more for the gruesome images he paints of life with-in a prison and his performance in Rithy Panhs award winning documen­tary, S21, The Killing Machine, than for his work as an artist.

I first met Nath in 2007, I had long been a fan of his and could not believe my luck when a close friend told me that he had a restaurant on Kampuchea Krom Boul­evard in Phnom Penh and I was more than welcome to stop by when I had free time. I had free time anytime to meet such an amazing man.
In our first meeting together I was surprised to meet such a lovely and dear old man – he reminded me of my grandpa who used to buy me meat pies before we picked strawberries together. Nath and I however, talked for about two hours about his experi­ences under the brutal Khmer Rouge regime and his arrest.

Vann Nath was arrested in December 1977 in Siem Reap province, he was told he had been chosen to join a co-operative harvesting rice but was instead taken to a wood hut, chained and shackled. He still has no idea why he was arrested. He was from a poor family in Siam Reap and barely made ends meet before the city was evacuated in 1975. After his arrest he was taken to Toul Sleng prison by a truck, in the dead of night, blind folded and shackled together with another 20 men. When they arrived they were stripped down to their underwear, but Nath like many others had no underwear so was stripped naked and taken into a room where they would remain shacked together with only a few spoons of rice porridge to eat per day and little water, they had to ask permission from the guard to move. Every four days a guard would come in with a fire hose and bath the prisoners from the doorway. Van Nath was accused of betraying Angkor, tortured and electrocuted in the hope to get a confession out of him, but he did not confess as he had no idea what he had done wrong.

After a month of living in the hell that was Toul Sleng, a former school turned torture centre, his name was called. He was un­shackled and taken to meet Duch, the chief of the prison who asked him if he could paint a picture of Pol Pot. Nath painted the picture and Duch liked it and kept him alive to paint more pic­tures of Pol Pot. Though he was lucky to be kept alive life was not pretty or easy for Nath. He saw and heard the interrogation, tor­ture, brutal treatment and starvation of thousands of men who would later be taken to Chueng Ek to be killed. He remembers very clearly his shock when he saw two white men, blindfolded in their underwear being taken into one of the interrogation rooms.

When the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in 1979 he managed to escape the Khmer Rouge and worked for the new Vietnam­ese Government, returning to Tuol Sleng to paint what he had witnessed in his year there. Researching prison documents he found his name on an execution list, under­lined in red ink Duch had written “keep” be­side his name, everyone else on that list had been killed. More than 12 000 men were tak­en to Tuol Sleng, interrogated, tortured and then killed. The chief of the prison, Duch, lived freely until photojournalist Nick Dun-lop discovered him in 1999. He was working for an NGO called ARC in Cambodia but soon turned himself in to the authorities. He is now on trial in Phnom Penh, charged with crimes against humanity.

Nath now lives with his wife and has opened a gallery in his restaurant, displaying his paintings. He will appear on Rick Steins cooking show Asian Odyssey which will air this year as well as another documentary, The Genocide Forgotten, by American professor Tim Sorel that will also be released this year to mark the anniversary of the fall of the Khmer Rouge. He is a humble man and tries not to think too much about his experiences under the brutal Pol Pot regime. In his spare time he enjoys painting landscapes and the Cambodia he remembers as a child.