Death of François Ponchaud

The Catholic missionary priest François Ponchaud (pic: Ad Extra-MEP), a great friend of Cambodia and the Cambodians, died on January 17 at the age of 85 in Haute-Savoie, France. Arriving in the kingdom in 1965, he was the first to alert Western opinion to the scale and horror of the crimes committed by the Pol Pot regime with his book “Cambodia Year Zero” published in 1977. He was one of the last Westerners to leave Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge took over Phnom Penh in 1975. This book had a huge impact by raising awareness of the Cambodian genocide. In “Beyond the Cambodian Storms”, a book of memoirs published in 2016, Dr Hay Ly Eang, who arrived in France a few days before the Pol Potists took power, paid tribute to him by emphasizing how much the words and writings of François Ponchaud had meant to Cambodians forced into exile: 

“In 1976, I participated in founding the Union générale des étudiants khmers en France (UNIGEK)  and was its president for a time. Our purpose was to promote mutual support among Cambodian students and to provide help to refugees in distress. We clashed swords with Khmer Rouge followers and fought their propaganda. In the first months following the fall of Phnom Penh, these partisans benefited from the support of French intellectuals on the left, who thought the apocalyptic stories coming from refugees, who had crossed the border into Thailand, were poisoning public opinion and were the work of information bureaus in countries hostile to the great revolution of Democratic Kampuchea.  The Khmer Rouge had no other alternative but to evacuate Phnom Penh, a city corrupt to the core, we often heard in French leftist circles. I was dumbfounded that this event—a first in the history of humanity—was treated like a peccadillo. Later, Jean Lacouture was the only one to admit regret for letting himself be led astray.

I stopped reading Le Monde whose biased coverage of my country’s situation exasperated me. Why did this newspaper, which for me had always stood for the truth, refused to see the truth? I only resumed reading this paper in 1976 when it published two opinion pieces signed by Father François Ponchaud, revealing to the world the depth of the Cambodian tragedy based on refugees’ testimonials. His book, Cambodge, année zéro,  published immediately afterwards, caused a huge stir in France. It also brought me profound, moral comfort. Finally, we were heard. Thank you, Father Ponchaud. »