Nath, Tu es parti trop tt. Il y a des salauds qui ont la peau dure et la vie longue.

Toi, tu savais les affronter. Il y a des hypocrites qui ont la langue bien pendue et insultent la mmoire de leurs mots indcents. Toi, tu savais leur rpondre. Tu tais un modle dintgrit et de courage. Tu domptais ta colre, tu calmais la mienne. Tu nas pas choisi cette vie de grand tmoin de lHistoire qui fut la tienne mais tu las assume jusquau bout. Quand Nuon Chea et Son Sen dclaraient que S21 tait une invention des Vietnamiens, tu encaissais avec abngation. Et tu reprenais ton travail de tmoin, sans jamais renoncer, malgr les cauchemars. Ta victoire, notre victoire, fut le jour o Khieu Samphan reconnut que S21 tait une institution dEtat. Ce jour-l, je tai vu sourire. La qualit et la prcision de tes rcits taient irremplaables. Tu ne dcrivais pas seulement la vie des dtenus S21 mais tout le processus de dshumanisation qui tait mis en uvre pour vous effacer, pour vous rduire en poussire. Ta mmoire signe lchec des Khmers rouges. Tu as toujours t habit par le pardon, limpossibilit de faire le moindre mal un tre humain. Cest ce principe l qui te guidait mme sous la torture Battambang, mme quand vous creviez petit feu sur le carrelage de S21. Cest ce principe-l et un courage inou qui tont conduit demander Duch dpargner ton compagnon, le peintre Bou Meng, dans latelier de S21 o votre vie ne tenait qu un fil. Nath, tu tais un homme juste. Ce calme et cette douceur qui te caractrisaient ont dsarm les anciens Khmers rouges. Je ne voulais pas que tu rencontres Houy quand je tournais avec lui S21. Mais tu es revenu chercher tes pinceaux. Tu las vu. Tu as fum cigarette sur cigarette puis tu las conduit par lpaule vers tes tableaux. Tu lui as demand si ce que tu avais peint tait vrai ou pas. Ce geste que tu as eu ntait pas un geste de rconciliation mais un geste pour lui faire comprendre : Tu dois dire la vrit, tu nous dois a, moi et aux victimes . Houy a tout reconnu. Une tape essentielle venait dtre franchie : un bourreau entamait son tour un travail de tmoignage. Et quand je tai demand il y a quelques annes pourquoi ce jour-l tu tais revenu S21, tu as rpondu que les mes des morts tavaient guid. Comme eux, avec eux, je sais que tu continueras nous guider. Tu as toujours tmoign pour les victimes, tu as t leur voix, leur porte-parole. Les victimes voulaient savoir, elles rclamaient justice. Vous tiez 36 dans le camion de la mort, qui vous a transports de Battambang S21. Vous vous tiez faits une promesse : celui qui survivra, tmoignera. Cette promesse, tu las tenue, non seulement pour tes 35 compagnons mais aussi pour les 12 380 victimes officielles et pour toutes celles qui nont pas laiss de traces. Tu as rendu aux morts leur histoire. Ils ne sont plus des nombres et des statistiques que lon cite dans les livres et les journaux. Quand dautres ont dclar quil fallait fermer S21, tu ty es farouchement oppos. Tu as toujours eu peur que lexistence de S21 soit remise en cause, et que les jeunes gnrations ne sachent qui vous tiez. Cest pour a que tu as accept de travailler avec moi pendant plus de vingt ans. Nous avons gagn cette bataille. Ce qui est terrible, cest que tu ne connatras pas la condamnation finale de Duch. Cette justice-l ne te mrite pas. Elle trane, elle soigne les bourreaux mais elle oublie les victimes. Tu as pourtant toujours servi la justice. La seule chose qui timportait tait de tmoigner. Tu ntais pas partie 1

civile contre Duch car rien, tes yeux, naurait jamais pu rparer le mal qui avait t fait. Et tu ignorais le sentiment de vengeance. Tu voulais raconter. Tu matrisais parfaitement lidologie de S21, tu avais une analyse sur la situation extrme que tu avais vcue. Il te fallait tmoigner et tmoigner encore pour rtablir la vrit, tu tais convaincu que cela suffirait les condamner. Derrire le tmoin courageux et pacifique que tu tais, je ne voudrais pas quon oublie lartiste. Exigeant, curieux et ouvert lautre, tu avais une haute ide de la conscience et de lthique comme essence de lart. Cette transmission fut un privilge pour les jeunes artistes cambodgiens qui ont eu la chance de croiser ton chemin. Je ne voudrais pas non plus quon oublie lhomme tendre et simple qui aimait sasseoir lombre dun arbre, contempler sa rizire, observer une fleur, ramasser des coquillages, goter une mangue verte. Tu tais homme de la terre et de leau. Tes origines taient paysannes. Tu es n enfant de la saison sche dans la province de Battambang un jour davril 1946. Ta mre cultivait la rizire et vendait des numbanchok. Tu as hrit delle lamour de la terre et un talent de cuisinier. Quatre annes passes la pagode ont achev de forger ta sagesse naturelle et tont permis dexercer trs jeune lart de la calligraphie sur feuilles de latanier. Cet apprentissage a fait de toi un fin connaisseur des principes et de la philosophie bouddhiques. Ces penses ont imprgn ta vie. Il manait constamment de toi une sagesse et une profondeur dans la rflexion. Comme vous tiez pauvre, tu as d apprendre un mtier. Ds lge de 6-7 ans, tu dessinais avec passion. Il ny a rien de surprenant ce que tu te sois retrouv apprenti dans un atelier de peintre daffiches. Comme tu tais dou, srieux et assidu, tu as pu tinstaller ton propre compte au bout de quatre ans. Tu vivais, entre autres, des commandes de cinmas. Les films japonais, chinois, indiens, franais constituaient un univers familier puisque tu peignais les visages de leurs hros. Tu avais tant dadmiration pour Corneille que lhrone du Cid, Chimne, fidle lhonneur de son pre, a inspir le nom de ta fille ane. La guerre et les Khmers rouges ont balay cette vie douce et tranquille. Tu as vcu un calvaire: torture, privation, humiliation. Ta sant y est passe. Ton corps en a gard les traces. La maladie dont tu souffrais avait bien une origine... Tu as perdu tes trois premiers enfants, tu ne ten es jamais remis. Mais tu as eu la force, avec ta femme, de tout reconstruire, de mener la fois une vie normale et un combat hors du commun. L encore, le totalitarisme et la terreur nont pas russi dtruire lhomme. Nath, tu tais un pre attentif et un mari aimant. Tu aurais aim finir bonze la pagode mais ton amour pour Eng et votre complicit taient tels que ce projet tait sans cesse remis. Tes amis bonzes en plaisantaient avec tendresse. Nath, tu incarnais, pour nous tous, le mot dignit. Ton tmoignage va au-del du drame cambodgien, il appartient lhistoire de lhumanit. Sa porte est universelle. Elle pose une question centrale sur lhomme et ses responsabilits. Aujourdhui, nous voil orphelins de ta sagesse. Mais tu es parti en laissant des empreintes profondes : des uvres, des paroles, des conseils, des souvenirs. Et tu visites nos rves. Ton esprit nous accompagne. Nous ne toublierons jamais. Mais nous ne sommes pas seuls. Des milliers dmes tattendent, dont tu as dfendu la mmoire toute ta vie. Le temps est venu pour elles aussi de te rendre les honneurs. 2

 English version

Nath, You left too early. We know of some thick-skinned bastards who are indestructible YOU knew how to confront them. We know of some hypocrites who have a ready tongue and insult memory with their indecent words. YOU knew how to respond to them. You were a model of integrity and courage. You controlled your anger, you apeased mine. You did not choose to be this essential witness of History that you became, but you fulfilled this role to the end. When Nuon Chea and Son Sen stated that S-21 was a Vietnamese fabrication, you could stomach it selflessly. And you resumed your work as a witness, without ever giving up, despite the nightmares. Your victory, our victory, came the day that Khieu Samphan admitted that S-21 was a State institution. That day, I saw you smile. The quality and the preciseness of your accounts were invaluable. Not only did you describe the life of the prisoners at S-21, you also explained the dehumanisation process that was implemented to erase the prisoners, and to reduce them to dust. Your memory is the failure of the Khmer Rouge. You were inhabited by forgiveness at all times, and you were unable to harm in any way a human being. That is the principle which guided you, even as you were being tortured at Battambang, even as you and your prison mates were slowly but surely dying. That is the principle, together with an extraordinary courage, which led you to ask Duch to spare your companion, the painter Bou Meng, in the workshop at S-21, where your lives hung by a thread. Nath, you were a just man. The quietness and softness so typical of you disarmed the former Khmer Rouge. I did not want you to meet Huy as I was shooting with him at S-21. But you came for your brushes. You saw him. You chainsmoked a few cigarettes, then you took him by the shoulder to your paintings. You asked whether what you had depicted was truthful or not. That gesture was not a reconciliation gesture, but one to have him understand: You must tell the truth, you owe it to us, to me and to the victims. Huy confessed everything. A major step had just been made: it was now an executioner that had just started to testify. And when I asked you a few years ago why you came back that day to S-21, you replied that the souls of the dead had guided you. Like them, with them, I know that you will keep on guiding us. You have been a relentless witness for the victims, you were their voice, you were their spokesman. The victims wanted to know, they wanted justice. There were 36 of you in the death truck which brought you from Battambang to S-21. You had made a mutual promise: the survivors would speak out. That promise, you kept it not only for your 35 companions, but also for the 12 380 official victims and all those who are unaccounted for. You gave back their history to the dead. The dead are not anymore figures and statistics listed in 3

books and magazines. When some declared that S-21 should be closed, you objected to it vehemently. You were always afraid that the very existence of S-21 would be challenged and that the young generations would not know who the victims were. That is why you accepted to work with me for more than twenty years. We won that battle. The most terrible thing is that you will not know the final verdict against Duch. That justice does not deserve you. It drags its feet, it takes care of the executioners but it forgets the victims. You did always serve justice, though. The only thing that mattered to you was to testify. You did not become a civil party against Duch because nothing in your eyes could ever remedy the wrong done to you. And you were impervious to the feeling of revenge. You wanted to speak. You had a perfect grasp of the ideology which ruled S-21; you were able to analyse the extreme situation which you had gone through. You needed to speak and speak again to re-establish the truth; you were convinced that it would be enough to have them convicted. I would not like the artist to be sidelined behind the courageous and peace-loving witness that you were. Demanding, curious and open to the others, you held in high esteem conscience and ethics as the essence of art. The young Cambodian artists who were fortunate enough to cross your path had the priviledge of receiving this from you. I would not want either, that people forget the tender and simple man who enjoyed sitting under the shade of a tree, watching his ricefields, observing a flower, picking up shells, having a bite at a green mango. You were a man from the earth and the water. You came from a farmer background. You were born during the dry season in the province of Battambang one day of April 1946. Your mother grew rice and sold numbanchok. She transmitted to you her love of the earth and her cooking skills. The four years you stayed at the pagoda helped you to build upon your natural wisdom, and allowed you to exercise from a young age the art of calligraphy on palm leaves. This learning process gave you deep knowledge of buddhist principles and philosophy. These thoughts pervaded your life. As your family was poor, you had to learn a trade. From the age of 6-7, you were drawing with a passion. There is nothing surprising in the fact that you became an apprentice in a poster workshop. Since you were gifted, serious and assiduous, you were able to open your own business after four years. You made a living, inter alia, from orders from movie theaters. Japanese, Chinese, Indian and French films became a familiar universe as you painted the faces of their heroes. You admired Corneille so much that you named your elder daughter after Chim ne, the heroine faithful to her father's honour in The Cid. The war and the Khmer Rouge swept away that quiet and sweet life. You went through hell: torture, deprivation, humiliation. You paid the price with your health. Your body kept the marks. The disease which affected you surely had a cause... You lost your three first children and you never recovered from it. But you had the strength, together with your wife, to rebuild everything, to lead at the same time a normal life and a fight out of the ordinary. Here again, totalitarianism and terror did not succeed in destroying the man. Nath, you were a caring father and a loving husband. You wished to end your life as a monk at the pagoda, but your love for Eng and your closeness were such that you constantly defered this plan. Your monk friends joked tenderly about it. 4

Nath, for all of us, you personified dignity. Your testimony goes beyond the Cambodian tragedy; it belongs to the history of mankind. Its relevance is universal. It raises a central issue about man and his accountability. Today, we are left orphans, deprived of your wisdom. But you left behind you a profound legacy: your works, your words, your advice, your memories. And you live on in our dreams. Your spirit remains with us. We will never forget you. However, we are not alone. Those thousands of souls whose memory you stood up for your whole life are waiting for you. Now the time has come for them to pay you tribute. Rithy Panh