Bou Meng, 85, Dies After Bearing Witness to S-21 as One of 7 Known Survivors

Q: Art saved his life in a death camp, but what happened to the portraits of the dictators he was forced to paint?

There is no clear public record that the portraits Bou Meng was forced to paint at S-21 survived or are identifiable today. What is well documented is that his skill as a painter spared him from execution: he was ordered to produce portraits of Pol Pot and other communist figures, including Marx and Lenin, under threat of death. But the available reporting on his death, his memoir, and museum background does not say those specific works were preserved, displayed, or traced after the Khmer Rouge regime fell in 1979. That absence is not surprising. The Khmer Rouge collapsed amid war and chaos, and much material from the regime was destroyed, abandoned or left undocumented. The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum preserves extensive prison records, photographs and evidence from S-21, but the searched material does not establish that Bou Meng’s dictator portraits are among them. What did endure was not those propaganda images, at least not in any clearly verified public way, but Bou Meng’s testimony. In later years he returned repeatedly to Tuol Sleng, testified at the trial of prison commandant Duch, and became part of Cambodia’s living archive of memory. His own later paintings and witness accounts effectively replaced the forced portraits as the more lasting historical record.

3 articles · Updated · The Associated Press · Aug 16

Bou Meng died late Friday at 85 from an age-related illness, the U.N.-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal said, marking the loss of one of Cambodia’s last direct witnesses to atrocities at S-21.
Nearly two years at the prison beginning in 1977 ended in survival because his painting skills were used to produce portraits of Pol Pot and other communist leaders after he was tortured.
Only seven people are known to have survived S-21, where an estimated 16,000 women and children were held over nearly four years before being killed.
In 2009, Bou Meng testified alongside other survivors at the trial of S-21 commandant Kaing Guek Eav, or Duch, who was later convicted of crimes against humanity, torture and murder.
His death renews focus on preserving testimony from Khmer Rouge survivors as Cambodia continues to reckon with a regime blamed for about 1.7 million deaths from execution, starvation and neglect.