Cambodia & Tribute : Bou Meng has left us at 85

Just two weeks ago, Cambodge Mag published a profile of Bou Meng, one of the last known adult survivors of S-21. On Friday night, he passed away at the age of 85, from age-related illness, according to the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). With him goes one of the last direct witnesses to what Tuol Sleng was.

Bou Meng signing copies of his book at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, Phnom Penh. — Photo: Anne David / Flickr (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons

What we already knew about him

Our profile, published in early August, traced his story: arrested with his wife Ma Yoeun in 1976, separated from her the moment they arrived at S-21 and never seeing her again, tortured for weeks before being spared execution for one reason alone — his skill as a painter. The center's commandant, Kaing Guek Eav (Duch), had him produce propaganda portraits of Pol Pot, Mao Zedong and Kim Il-sung, forced labor that kept him alive while nearly all of the roughly 15,000 to 20,000 prisoners who passed through S-21 were executed after interrogation. In 2009, he testified before the ECCC at Duch's trial; Duch was sentenced to life for crimes against humanity, torture and murder, and died in custody in 2020. For the full account, our original article remains available at cambodgemag.com.

A tribute from the world of memory

“The passing of Mr. Bou Meng represents the loss of an important historical witness to the grave crimes committed during the brutal Khmer Rouge regime, particularly to the history and tragedy that took place at the former S-21 Security Centre,” the ECCC wrote in its statement.

Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), paid tribute on Sunday to Bou Meng's fight for justice, a journey that, in his words, will remain “etched into genocide history around the world.” He called for active efforts to preserve the accounts of the millions of survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime, and to provide them with both physical and psychological support — a reminder that memory alone does not always heal.

What his passing leaves behind

Remarried in the years that followed his release, Bou Meng spent much of his later life at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum — the former S-21 prison, now a site of memory — where he sold visitors copies of a book recounting his story. The very place of his captivity had, day after day, become the place where he chose to tell what he had lived through.

Each passing of a direct witness to this period narrows the window onto what the country went through a little further. With Bou Meng's death, the last living adult survivor among the seven counted at S-21 is now Chum Mey, born around 1930, a mechanic spared because of his ability to repair the center's sewing machines. Two brothers, children at the time, Norng Chanphal and Norng Chanly, found hiding on the prison grounds when it was liberated in January 1979, are also still alive. Two other children who survived S-21 are believed to be alive today as well, but their identities have never been established: taken in by orphanages after the regime's fall, they have never, to this day, been found.

Bou Meng carried that testimony to the very end: in courtrooms, in the pages of a book sold by his own hand, and in the memory of a country that continues, patiently, to learn not to forget.