Harmony and conflict

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We arrived at Ponchaud’s workplace, where his staff greeted me warmly in Khmer, apparently the only working language in his office.The young man lead me to their bureau on the first floor where I was greeted by the legendary Francois Ponchaud himself, barefooted and smiling broadly.

Our hour-long interview was conducted entirely in French; each account was more enthralling than the other, in the course of thirty minutes I was given a literal brief history of Cambodia and its people.

"In the morning, thousands of militants, farmers flooded into Phnom Penh, because they knew the Khmer were going to arrive at any moment" begins Ponchaud. On that morning, the French priest of MEP hosted around 2000 people in the cathedral, including the militants who demanded entry at gunpoint. At 7am there was a complete calm in the city of Phnom Penh, as a series of white four-by-fours pulled up in front of the French embassy and 7 or 8 men in black stepped out of the vehicles. "We thought to ourselves, everything should be going quite well if the Khmer Rouge wishes to talk to the French, perhaps we might just keep our lives" recalls Ponchaud. When they finally left, they were shot at by the tanks by the cathedral on Boulevard Monivong; a lone man in black stepped out, walked slowly toward the tank in front of the cathedral and convinced the tank to lower its arms. From then onward, around 8-10am, it was sheer joy for the civilians for they had seen how these men in black had pacifically disarmed the militants. "The refugees believed the war to be over and were overjoyed, and despite what journalists say, the people applauded when Lon Nol’s army surrendered" Ponchaud remembers a discordance between the people’s jubilation that the war was over and the sullen attitude of the victorious soldiers in green, sporting hats of Mao Ze Dong. Shortly after that, these men in green started to manage the traffic, shifting weapons onto the middle of the roads, disposing their clothing along with with their weapons. "Later that day we heard on the radio several announcements, notably by the chief of the Army declaring that the war was lost and that everybody was to surrender. Another announcement was made by the Supreme Patriarch calling for reconciliation but at the end of the speech, the microphone was taken by someone declaring: "We are not here to negotiate. We won with our weapons."

Ponchaud felt that there was a new group in power- the Khmer Rouge.

When it came to the Westerners, the Khmer Rouge were not so adamant on making them leave like the rest of the population. Some asked Ponchaud for his Bic (pens), others for his motocycle; objects had lost their value at this point in time and Father Ponchaud was more than willing to give them away.

At 6pm the city had been emptied of its people and noise, some Khmer Rouge came to the diocese, and looked at the foreigners with much suspicion. Later when they heard Ponchaud and others speaking Khmer, they instantly warmed up to them and spent the night joking and chatting. They were people from the region of Angkor and were in fact, ’very nice people’. "One should not think that all the Khmer Rouge were vicious beings" continues Ponchaud. To his surprise, he saw many different groups of people amongst the Khmer Rouge: some were stern, others looked disoriented, some demanded the foreigners to leave, and others asked them to stay. It was completely disorganised, says Ponchaud. It was only later that they learned that Phnom Penh had been taken by six Khmer Rouge Armies.

The morning of the 18 April, the Khmer Rouge asked to be taken to the train station which was only 100metres from the diocese. Ponchaud and a friend took two cars but instead of driving them directly, they took them for a tour of the city, where they did some sightseeing and got fired at around the Independence Monument by soldiers of Lon Nol.

Finally they arrived very late at the station and the soldiers were scolded badly by their superiors. Ponchaud went to the French Embassy from where he was the last foreigner to leave Cambodian soil on 7 May, 1975.

Written by : Alice Lin Send a message to Alice Lin

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