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

In 1968 he also ran a small painting shop in Chamkar Leu district of Kampong Cham province.

[11] On March 18, 1970 Prince Sihanouk was dethroned by a Coup d'état and Lon Nol took power over Cambodia.

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.

[13] 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.

On August 16, 1977 two youths told Bou Meng that he was assigned to teach at the Fine Arts School of Phnom Penh and he was very happy about this, since he didn't have to work in that cooperative anymore.

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

[18] 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.

[19] A few weeks after his interrogation started, two youths visited the cells in order to find prisoners who could paint portraits and pictures.

[20] Then, Bou Meng was taken to the health clinic of the prison in order to heal his wounds, and he met Comrade Duch, the chief of S-21.

They also passed Choeung Ek (the Killing Fields area) where they smelled a "stench of something like dead animals on the night breeze".

[23] In 1981, Ung Pech, an ex-prisoner of S-21 (and one of only seven known adult survivors) 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.