Event – Sothik, Marie Desplechin, Sothik Hok illustrated by Tian

Sothik Illustrations by Tian Sothik was born in 1967 in a Cambodia in turmoil, ravaged by American bombings and undermined by injustices. He was three years old when the Khmer Rouge settled in his village. While claiming to want to restore justice, these young fanatics in black imposed an increasingly difficult life on the villagers.

The day they took power in the country, Sothik was eight years old. All of Cambodia became a huge prisoner camp. Books were burned, religion forbidden, money abolished. Teachers, doctors, and scholars were persecuted and killed. Sothik and his family had to leave their home and abandon all their possessions. Terror and famine would soon spread everywhere.

Finally, the Khmer Rouge took children away from their parents to educate them according to their ideology. Deprived of his family, separated from his friends, Sothik joined a group of boys his age with whom he would have to live and work.

Marie Desplechin met Sothik Hok in 2014, during a trip to Cambodia. He told her about his childhood shattered by war and his desire to tell his story to younger generations. He couldn't have found a better person...