MEET VANN NATH

Vann Nath is a Cambodian painter who lived through the genocide there. His life story is one of the most incredible I've ever heard. Nath was arrested under the Khmer Rouge regime and imprisioned in the infamous S21 prison in Phnom Penh. Almost everyone who was sent there (roughly 20,000 people) was tortured until they confessed to crimes against the government, and then they were killed. When the Vietnamese forces liberated Phnom Penh in 1979, only seven inmates were left alive. Vann Nath was one of them. His life was originally spared because of his talents as a painter. During his year in jail he painted propaganda paintings of Pol Pot and made the statues of him shown in the bottom photo. A year after he escaped prison, he returned there to help convert it into a genocide museum. During the almost four years that the Khmer Rouge controlled Cambodia, approximatly two million people (or 1/4 of the population) died of starvation, exhaustion, or were murdered. Though it was unthinkably painful, Vann Nath spent two years painting scenes of what he witnessed inside the prison. About twenty large canvases of his are perhaps the most moving and horrific part of the museum. I met the artist on a recent trip to Cambodia, and interviewed him for a piece I'm working on (photos to come later). The top photo is Nath in front of a painting I commissioned from him. Below that is a recent painting he did featuring Duch, the man who ran the S21 prision, who is still alive and has yet to be brought to justice. The third photo is one of the more horrific ones from the museum. It shows pehaps the most barbaric act in the history of our species.