Arena · Season 1 · Episode 296

Cambodian Witness

Friday, December 5

When the Khmer Rouge invaded Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, they forced the entire population into the countryside where they were starved, beaten and worked to death on grandiose, impractical 'revolutionary' schemes. Among them was a young man called Someth May, a doctor's son. Ten members of his family died before he managed to escape to Thailand. There he contacted the distinguished journalist and poet, James Fenton , who arranged his release from a refugee camp and brought him to England. For two years, May struggled to write his story with Fenton's help, and over the last 18 months Arena filmed the two writers as they overcame the barriers of language, memory and intense emotion to create a shocking and vivid memoir of his horrific experiences.