Widow of Ung Boun Hor Blames the French for his Disappearance

[CEOCambodiaNews]

In France, Billon Ung struggles to uncover the truth about her husband’s disappearance in Cambodia

Portrait de Madame Billon Ung à son domicile de Nogent-sur-Marne, le 4 mai 2022. David Maurel for Le Monde's M magazine
June 4, 2022
by Le Monde

In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge were close to taking power in Cambodia. Faced with the threat, Billon Ung left her country, leaving behind her husband, the president of the Cambodian National Assembly Ung Boun Hor. She would never see him again. Convinced that France had handed him over to Pol Pot’s men, she is fighting for the government to acknowledge its responsibility.

Billon Ung opens the door into her home in Nogent-sur-Marne, where she lives in a red-brick apartment building. The pocket-sized apartment in the department of Val-de-Marne is decorated with a jumble of souvenirs: a poster of the Bayon temple in Angkor, Cambodia, stands next to a Swiss cuckoo clock that comes alive with each rotation of the dial. Ms. Ung apologizes for the mess, moves one pile of files, then another. She has an archive to show us.

She finds it at last; an old issue of Newsweek dated May 19, 1975, the pages of which she carefully unfolds. In the middle of a report on the capture of Phnom Penh by the Khmer Rouge, there is a black and white photo of her husband, Ung Boun Hor. The then-President of the Cambodian National Assembly is clearly frightened, two gendarmes are holding his arms. “Ung Boun Hor is expelled by the French,” the caption reads.
In full (subscription required): https://www.lemonde.fr/en/m-le-mag/arti ... 34_117.htm

[CEOCambodiaNews]

Back story on the events that surround the disappearance of Ung Boun Hor at the French Embassy when the Khmer Rouge took power in Phnom Penh in 1975.

Sunday, April 11, 2010
The embassy, the widow and the traitor
By Jérôme Becquet and Adrien Le Gal
Cambodge Soir Hebdo
No. 128, Vol. 3, 8-21 April 2010
Translated from French by Pheuk Silola

Mr. Ung Bun Hor, former president the Khmer Republic regime National Assembly, and his wife, Mrs. Billon Ung during happier time.

On 20 April 1975, high-ranking Khmer Republic officials crossed the gate into the French embassy where they would all find a certain death. Did a French citizen betrayed them by informing the Khmer Rouge of their presence? Can the French authorities be blamed for handingover these officials to the KR? The widow of one of these officials hopes to find the truth from the French justice, but she could also turn the ECCC for help.

“I hope that the truth will be given on the exact conditions in which my husband disappeared with the active complicity of the French authorities of the time which were led by President Valery Giscard d’Estaing and also under the Jacques Chirac administration,” claimed Billon Ung, the widow of the president of the Khmer Republic regime National Assembly. The latter took refuge inside the compound of the French embassy.

The date was 20 April 1975. The KR had entered Phnom Penh three days earlier and they emptied the city of all its residents. All foreigners living in the city had gathered at the French embassy, starting on 17 April, several high-ranking officials of the Lon Nol regime also came to find asylum there, including Ung Bun Hor, the president of the National Assembly. However, three days later, the “super-traitors” were sentenced to death by the new KR regime, and they were handed over to the KR who were waiting for them in front of the French embassy, at exactly 3PM, as confirmed by a telegram sent by Jean Dyrac, the French vice-consul, to the Quai d’Orsay [the French ministry of Foreign Affairs].
“I was able to escape with my children 10 days before the arrival of the communist soldiers in the city,” Billon Ung recalled. “In Paris, while watching the news on TV, I saw this photo of him, standing up, about to be handed over to the KR.” Since then, the photo disappeared from the archive of the French National Institute of Audiovisual, Billon Ung claimed.

A widow’s crusade

She obtained her French citizenship in 1976, at the age of 36. Twenty years later, she launched herself into a lengthy legal crusade accusing France of handing over her husband to the KR while he was asking for asylum. “I brought up a lawsuit against X in December 1999 at the Creteil Tribunal, for crime against humanity, assassination, as well as torture and barbaric acts,” she declared. Why did she wait so long? “For security reasons,” Billon Ung claimed.

Since then, the French justice system moved at a snail pace. “Just for my lawsuit case, three investigation judges had to take care of it,” she said. “The second judge to be involved in my case was able to lift the defense secret on one portion of the telegrams exchanged between Jean Dyrac and the then-French authorities. Then, in January 2007, young Judge Toublanc got involved in the case, and he finally declared himself incompetent to continue the investigation.
” It was incomprehensible, said Patrick Baudoin, one of the two lawyers of Billon Ung. He also happens to be a lawyer for the International Federation of Human Rigths. “The reason given was that the conditions stipulated by the Penal Code to justify the universal competency of a French judge were not met. The Paris Appeal court confirmed this finding in October 2007, but in January 2009, the Court of Cassation [the equivalent of the Supreme Court] believed that it was the opposite, and that the conditions were all met and the investigation could continue. We cannot talk about active cooperation from the French authorities which are most often hostile to see the conclusion of this case, due to political considerations.”

A “traitor” inside the French embassy?

François Ponchaud who was present in the French embassy during that time, remains hesitant on the need to re-open this case. “I understand Billon Ung’s suffering … But, the KR are the ones who should be blamed, not French vice-consul Jean Dyrac! Nevertheless, if it was found that France gave him the order to hand over these officials [to the KR], then it would be a mistake from the [French] state.”

More troubling news: the fact that the KR knew about the presence of these high-ranking officials inside the French embassy. François Ponchaud added: “I would like to know who gave out the list of Cambodian officials who took refuge inside the embassy. For example, I met Prince Sirik Matak under a big tree on front of the Le Phnom hotel [currently Le Royal Hotel]. He was saying that he “was waiting” for his cousin Sihanouk. One of my friends, Bernard Berger, took him in his Ami 6 car, hid him under a blanket and sneaked him inside the French embassy through the back door. The [French] authorities hid him inside a locked office. Who revealed that he was there? Maybe a French citizen snitched? It is also possible that the KR intercepted the radio communications with France … To me, this remains a mystery.”

Patrice de Beer, then a reporter for the French newspaper Le Monde who was based in Thailand, was also inside the embassy on 17 April, but he said that he did not see “Ung Bun Hor, nor Prince Sirik Matak who, on 12 April, refused the offer made by US ambassador James Gunther Dean to leave Cambodia with him in a helicopter.” “But, we quickly learned that they were inside [the embassy],” he added.

Telegrams sent by Jean Dyrac to the Quai d’Orsay on the same day indicated that “Ung Bun Hor forced the entry [into the embassy], and that he is currently maintained under our control inside one of our rooms. Prince Sirik Matak succeeded in entering the embassy compound by stepping over the gate with two of his bodyguards dressed as civilians.”
This story differs from the one told by François Ponchaud. Roland Neveu, a former war photographer, also presented a version that is different from the one told by the embassy. He remembered that members of the Khmer Republic regime were isolated. Patrice de Beer and Roland Neveu described Jean Dyrac as being “overwhelmed by the events,” as a “civil servant – albeit a consular one, i.e. not diplomatic – who takes orders given out by Paris.” “The KR demanded that all Khmer citizens leave the embassy,”
https://ki-media.blogspot.com/2010/04/e ... aitor.html

[John Bingham]

What a ridiculous case. The Khmer Rouge didn't respect or recognize embassies.