29 Facts About Bou Meng

Bou Meng is one of only seven known adult survivors of the Khmer Rouge imprisonment in the S-21 Tuol Sleng camp, where 20,000 Cambodians were tortured and executed.

Bou Meng was arrested with his wife, Ma Yoeun, in 1976 and taken into S-21; they never met again after then.

Bou Meng was spared from being slaughtered only because he was a highly skilled painter.

Bou Meng's wife, according to the records of Tuol Sleng, was tortured and killed on August 16,1977.

Bou Meng's children ended up in a children's center, where they eventually starved to death.

When Bou Meng found out that people thought that he was dead, he went back to S-21.

Bou Meng's family was poor, but their conditions weren't that different from other common Cambodian families.

Bou Meng studied at Kor wat with the monks since there were very few schools and teachers.

In 1963, Bou Meng returned to his hometown - Kampong Cham - where he started to work for cinema theaters as a painter.

Bou Meng's job was to paint the pictures for each movie.

Bou Meng was still unsure about what to do, but one day he heard on the radio Prince Sihanouk speaking from Beijing and appealing to the people to join the revolution.

Bou Meng joined the revolution mainly because he wanted Prince Sihanouk to return to power.

Bou Meng "felt strange about these scenes" and since then he started to realize that he had been cheated by the revolution.

Once in Phnom Penh, Bou Meng was assigned to work inside the State Commercial Office, while his wife Ma Yoeun was assigned to work at a hospital.

Bou Meng found out that Ta-Lei cooperative was a sort of detention center and this shocked him.

Bou Meng noticed that people at Ta-Lei gradually disappeared and new people arrived every day.

Bou Meng told them that they had done nothing wrong, but the guard screamed at them that Angkar never makes mistakes.

Bou Meng was interrogated and tortured for weeks with methods like electric shocks, bamboo sticks and whips.

Bou Meng once recalled that "they tortured me like an animal" and "my life was so miserable".

Bou Meng always answered that he was innocent and that he had done nothing wrong, but the guards kept torturing him and asking him where he had met the CIA, KGB and "Yuon land swallowers", despite him not even knowing what they were.

Bou Meng finally fabricated confessions, hoping that they would stop torturing him.

Bou Meng said that he had joined the CIA at the pagoda with the monks and that he was asked to join the CIA by a pagoda boy.

Bou Meng had to paint portraits of Pol Pot, Karl Marx, and other propaganda pictures.

Bou Meng said: "Because of my painting skills, I was now treated less harshly".

Bou Meng was in touch with other prisoners who had been granted special treatment because of his skill, and one of those was Vann Nath.

Bou Meng was scared, as he thought that his last day had come.

The prisoners managed to flee and, among those, Bou Meng, who escaped northward with a friend.

In 1981, Ung Pech, an ex-prisoner of S-21 who had become director of the museum, asked Bou Meng to come back to S-21.

Bou Meng had never thought about coming back, but he saw it as an opportunity to recount the pain and fear he had suffered, and let both Cambodians and the whole world know about his experiences.