Bou Meng (, ; born 1941) 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. He was arrested with his wife, Ma Yoeun, in 1976 and taken into S-21; they never met again after then. Bou Meng was tortured for weeks, with many kinds of torture devices (electric shock, bamboo sticks, whips, rattans, cart axles, etc.) and he had to fabricate confessions. He was spared from being slaughtered only because he was a highly skilled painter. His wife, according to the records of Tuol Sleng, was tortured and killed on August 16, 1977. His children ended up in a children's center, where they eventually starved to death.
In 2002, he was believed to be dead. In January 2002, Cambodian newspaper Phnom Penh Post wrote that he had died in the 1990s, while Cambodian magazine Searching for the truth wrote that he had "disappeared". When Bou Meng found out that people thought that he was dead, he went back to S-21 (which had been converted into a museum).
Early life
Bou Meng was born in 1941 into a peasant family. His father's name was Bou Hak, while his mother's name was Lay Kat; the family lived along the Mekong River, close to Kampong Cham. As it was normal at that time, many Cambodians didn't have a birth certificate and they often didn't know their exact birth date. His family was poor, but their conditions weren't that different from other common Cambodian families. At that time, Cambodia was under the French protectorate and the French had imposed heavy taxes on Cambodians. This, combined with the lack of land to farm, worsened their living conditions. Another problem was the lack of hospitals in the region where Bou Meng lived. If somebody got sick, they had to be taken to the district hospital.
Bou Meng studied at Kor wat with the monks since there were very few schools and teachers. Therein the monks taught him Khmer literature and mathematics. In the same wat, he became very interested in painting and its interest grew stronger and stronger.
In 1956, at the age of 15, Bou Meng became a monk. At that time, virtually every Cambodian family had at least a son who had become a monk, and it was a bad thing to not have a monk in one's family. In the meanwhile, he also used to visit a painting shop (named "Special Painting House") where he enjoyed seeing how pictures were made and, in the same shop, he met a few painters. A Chinese painter taught him to draw black and white pictures with a black powder made from petroleum, while another painter who had studied at the Fine Arts University in Phnom Penh taught him to paint "all kinds of pictures".
In 1963, Bou Meng returned to his hometown - Kampong Cham - where he started to work for cinema theaters as a painter. His job was to paint the pictures for each movie. It soon earned him a good living, and he married Ma Yoeun. In 1968 he also ran a small painting shop in Chamkar Leu district of Kampong Cham province.
Joining the revolution
On March 18, 1970 Prince Sihanouk was dethroned by a Coup d'état and Lon Nol took power over Cambodia. Cities and urban areas were controlled by the Khmer Republic dominated by Lon Nol, while the remaining areas were under the control of the Khmer Rouge.
Shortly thereafter, an old friend of Bou Meng whose name was Nai and a man whose name was Chhon asked him to join the revolution/CPK. Nai explained that it was about liberating both the country and Prince Sihanouk. 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. After hearing this, Bou Meng no longer hesitated to join the revolution and, in June 1971, he left his village with his wife and went to the jungle in order to help the revolutionaries. Bou Meng joined the revolution mainly because he wanted Prince Sihanouk to return to power.
On April 17, 1975 the Khmer Rouge successfully managed to take control of Phnom Penh and the whole country, and everybody celebrated inside the compound where Bou Meng was working. Short thereafter, they were told to travel to Phnom Penh and, on their way, they saw many city dwellers heading towards the opposite direction. Many were sad and some children were crying because they couldn't find their parents. Bou Meng "felt strange about these scenes" and since then he started to realize that he had been cheated by the revolution.