Bou Meng and six other prisoners literally rose from the dead when they walked free from the Khmer Rouge prison, Tuol Sleng, in 1979. They had survived a death camp where 16,000 other people had been jailed, tortured and finally sent for execution on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.
On Wednesday, Bou Meng, 61, made a second rising when he re-appeared in Phnom Penh—almost two decades after falling out of the public eye—to refute long-held speculation that he had passed away.
Bou Meng returned to Tuol Sleng—now a genocide museum—to meet reporters and researchers and to announce that the third surviving member of the original Tuol Sleng seven is still alive and ready to testify in a Khmer Rouge tribunal.
“I came to visit Tuol Sleng today to show myself to the world that I am still alive,” Bou Meng said. “I also want to tell that I am the real victim and survivor of S-21 prison. I want to stand as a witness in the Khmer Rouge trial if there is one in the future. I will tell how horrifying the Pol Pot regime was,” he said.
Until this week researchers at the Documentation Center of Cambodia—the country’s leading repository on information related to the Khmer Rouge—had believed that Phnom Penh-based artist Vann Nath and Chum Mey were the only two remaining Tuol Sleng survivors.
Bou Meng said he discovered the error last week when he came across a back issue of the DC-Cam magazine “Searching for the Truth” that carried a picture of the original seven survivors with an article claiming he was dead.
Like the six others, Bou Meng survived because he was useful to the Khmer Rouge who spared his life in return for his painting portraits of their leader, Pol Pot. “[Prison commandant] Duch told me if I would not paint like a real picture, they would kill me. I took three months to paint a portrait of Pol Pot,” he said.
Bou Meng’s first wife and two children perished in Tuol Sleng.
“I feel very saddened at the loss of my wife and two children. But, I want to tell the world that I stay alive and want to testify in any future trial,” he said.
