Hen Sophal "The Khmer Rouge Leader"
THE KHMER ROUGE LEADER REIGNED OVER MORE THAN 3 MILLION BONES
By : HEN SOPHAL
Cambodia/ born 1958
ARTIST CV

I’m very happy to be part of the exhibition of the Khmer Rouge regime, organized by Meta House. This is an opportunity for Cambodian Artists like me to show my work, and for this I am grateful.

I’m exhibiting three pieces of work about the Pol Pot regime [Khmer Rouge]. This regime treated people worse than animals and prohibited freedom.

Artists, intellectuals and well-educated people were killed; and the rest were deprived of food in order to make them powerless to fight back. Moreover, they forced the young and the old to work heavily both day and night. Under the dictatorship people were accused of being the enemy for making small mistakes, and killed using various methods: using the base of a bamboo pole, hoe handles, axes and palm leaves.

The small mistakes were things like stealing pepper (that they grew themselves), stealing a chicken egg, stealing potatoes, stealing rice plants, secrete love, not being focused on work etc. They pushed people to work, and anything other than work was used as an excuse to kill them.