AsiaLIFE

In 1977, New Zealander Kerry Hamill’s sailboat veered off course. Just off of Koh Tang, he was captured by the Khmer Rouge. Thirty-one years later, his brother Rob came to Cambodia to testify in the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. Craig Gerard speaks with Rob Hamill on a return trip. Photo by Conor Wall.

A silver medallist in the 1994 World Rowing Championships, Rob Hamill is a well-known figure in his own right.

He is also the winner of the 1997 Atlantic Rowing Race. A gruelling 41-day ordeal, the race goes through a stretch of water that was been attempted by only 20 people in recorded history. Six of those died along the way.

The victory is probably the best insight into Hamill’s personality; the mental and physical endurance required to make such a passage is beyond what most people can imagine. The journey
changed his life in ways that Hamill himself couldn’t foresee.

“I grieved for him out at sea,” admits Hamill. “I’d be sitting in the cabin, openly grieving like I’d just heard the news.” It was at this point that Hamill realised he would have to confront his
brother’s death.

Though his family had “locked up the memory and thrown away the key,” Hamill decided to return to Cambodia and help tell the story of his brother’s imprisonment and eventual death. When the Khmer Rouge tribunal was announced, his plan turned into action.

After reading about his mission in a New Zealand paper, filmmakers Annie Goldson and Peter Gilbert contacted Hamill to see if he would be interested in appearing in a documentary. The
resulting Brother Number One, now in post-production, follows Hamill as he testifies at the tribunal and tours Cambodia on two separate visits.

“I went with my heart open,” says Hamill of his first trip to Cambodia in 2008. He came during the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia’s Case 001, the trial of Kaing Guek Eav. Alias Duch, the defendant ran Tuol Sleng Prison, where Kerry spent his final days.

Hamill wanted to accept that Duch was asking for forgiveness and was “deeply was affected by what he had done.”

He recollects the first time he saw Duch. Straight off the plane, exactly 31 years to the day after his brother arrived in Phnom Penh, Hamill headed to the court to see relevant testimony.

During the proceedings, he raised his head to see the former prison director staring directly at him; Hamill stared back.

“We locked horns. It was horrible. We were holding eye contact for about 10 seconds before he finally broke away,” says Hamill. “I thought that was a really rude gesture. It was a bad start for a man who was looking for some forgiveness in our first meeting to stare me down.”

Hamill returned to Cambodia this March for the final days of Case 001. Duch was set for a 19-year sentence, but on the last day of his trial, Duch shocked the world. Reversing his previous
admission of guilt, he asked to be found innocent.

Over two years after the initial hearing, Duch’s team claimed the court had no jurisdiction over their client and therefore should release him.

Hamill felt that he had to be present for this critical time in the court’s history. But he also had a personal motive for coming back to Cambodia.

“I wanted to meet with Duch,” says Hamill. “I would like to understand the process he went through. I would like to understand at what point [did] the pureness of the revolution become
distorted for him. At what point did he really believe what he was doing was wrong?”

He sent a letter to Duch to request a meeting but received no answer. “Maybe in his own time,” says Hamill.

Hamill is confident that Duch recalls his brother. “There were half a dozen [Western] prisoners. He remembers him,” he says. “I would like to know more about Kerry and what happened there, and where his remains are—or ashes as they may be.”

While touring Toul Sleng, Hamill came across a painting of a prisoner being subjected to the water-boarding torture method. “I somehow knew this had happened to my brother,” Hamill
confides.

Perhaps it was the connection to the sea. Perhaps it was an instinct that only brothers can feel. His feeling made a strong impact, and, he says, “the opportunity to forgive was compromised.”

“Going through this process, I felt like I was obliged to forgive,” reflects Hamill. “And that didn’t help. I think if you go into these things, you cannot force it. It has to be an organic natural thing that occurs along the journey. If it happens, it happens.”