François Ponchaud

François Ponchaud (; 8 February 1939 – 17 January 2025) was a French Catholic priest and missionary to Cambodia. He was best known for his documentation of the genocide which occurred under the Khmer Rouge (KR), and for being one of the first people to expose the human rights abuses being carried out at the time.

Biography Ponchaud was born in Sallanches, France on 8 February 1939, as one of twelve children. Until he was 20 years old, he worked on his parents' farm. He attended seminary in 1958 but the following year he left due to national service. He spent three years in Algeria as a paratrooper during the Algerian War and returned to his studies in 1961, becoming a Jesuit. He applied through the Paris Foreign Missions Society for an assignment to undertake missionary work, and was assigned to Cambodia. In 2013, Ponchaud recalled, "I didn’t like the war [...] Now I think I’d rather be killed or go to prison than participate in such a war, but at the time I didn’t dare go to prison."

Ponchaud said of the genocide that it, "Was above all, the translation into action the particular vision of a man [sic]: A person who has been spoiled by a corrupt regime cannot be reformed, he must be physically eliminated from the brotherhood of the pure." In testimony given on what had happened to officers from the former Lon Nol regime, Ponchaud stated that in 1975 the KR had as an aim the destruction of anyone who had cooperated with both the US and the previous regime, and that he had heard from four witnesses that the KR had killed 380 people in Phnom Thipdey, a commune in Battambang Province.

In 2001 a documentary titled The Cross and the Bodhi Tree: Two Christian Encounters with Buddhism was released, the film is about how Buddhism shaped both the life of Ponchaud, and that of a Protestant nun, Mother Rosemary.

Ponchaud said in 2021, that his aim "is helping people to understand clearly what Buddha taught and what Jesus said in the Gospels, helping them to live together and love one another,” and that "The teaching of Buddha, and meditation, allowed me to become a better Christian".

Published works Cambodia: Year Zero, Penguin, 1978, Social Change in the Vortex of Revolution, in: Cambodia 1975-1978: Rendezvous with Death, Princeton University Press, 1989, Karl Jackson, ed., pp. 151–177. La cathédrale de la rizière: 450 ans d'histoire de l'église au Cambodge, Fayard, 1990, Buddha e Cristo: le due salvezze, EDB, 2005, Brève histoire du Cambodge: Le pays des Khmers rouges, Magellan & Cie Éditions, 2015