Marjolaine Caron has two very distinct memories of her father. One is
of him taking her to a cafe in Paris; he read the newspaper. Another is
when they went to the cinema together.
Marjolaine
Caron, daughter of French journalist and photographer Gilles Caron, who
went missing on National Road 1 in April 1970, stands with her husband
Louis Bachelot, as they present a book of Gilles Caron’s work in Phnom
Penh yesterday. (Lauren Crothers/The Cambodia Daily)
“I remember the moments I was alone with him,” she said yesterday,
standing a few steps away from a black and white portrait of her late
father, the renowned French journalist and war photographer Gilles
Caron, who disappeared in Cambodia on April 5, 1970.
The portrait was taken of Gilles Caron on a ferry at Neak Leung the
day before he went missing along with another French journalist, Guy
Hannoteaux, and French law professor Michel Visot. They were traveling
on National Road 1 in the east of the country, which was controlled at
the time by Vietnamese communist forces and the Khmer Rouge.
Gilles Caron was 30 at the time; Marjolaine Caron was just 7.
Like so many of the journalists killed in Cambodia at that
time—photojournalists Sean Flynn and Dana Stone went missing the next
day on the same road—Gilles Caron’s remains have never been found.
A memorial was erected in May near the Hotel Le Royal in Phnom Penh
to honor the 37 journalists who died covering the civil war in the
1970s. Many reporters and photographers would stay at Le Royal while on
assignment up until the fall of Phnom Penh in 1975.
Yesterday, a marble plaque dedicated to Gilles Caron was mounted on
the back of the memorial to the fallen journalists and was unveiled by
his daughter at a ceremony attended by Information Minister Khieu
Kanharith, along with veteran war photojournalists Al Rockoff and Tim
Page, and former Reuters correspondent James Pringle.
The plaque is one way of honoring Gilles Caron’s legacy in Cambodia,
but there are many unanswered questions, Ms. Caron, who is now 49, said
after lighting incense under her father’s picture.
“When I arrived and the plane landed, I was feeling very oppressed,”
she said. “It was very hard for me—I was crying. I didn’t think I could
come to this country. Because I didn’t think I could do anything to find
him. I would like to find some bones or something. I would like it very
much, because we have nothing,” Ms. Caron said.
“Maybe somebody knows something,” she said. “Maybe. I think about it, but what can I do?”
While several senior government officials served with Khmer Rouge
forces in the east of the country where Gilles Caron and other foreign
journalists went missing during the 1970s, Mr. Kanharith said anyone who
might have information about their fate was most likely purged during
the regime.
“Vietnam made an offensive in Cambodia,” Mr. Kanharith said. “In five
years of fighting, more journalists were killed than in 10 years in
Vietnam.
“Maybe the Vietnamese know about this,” he added.
Mr. Kanharith, who helped fund the memorial, said relatives of other
journalists commemorated are also welcome to erect pictures of their
loved ones.
Ms. Caron’s husband Louis Bachelot, the director of the Gilles Caron Foundation, said the visit has been cathartic.
“The main thing is we want to speak about the freedom of the media,
and I think I realized when I arrived, that Gilles Caron was a great
journalist, not just a photographer, and he was the one who can explain
the beginning of this third Indochine war,” Mr. Bachelot said.
“For us coming here it felt impossible because there was no news
[about Gilles Caron’s remains]. We just knew that he was on Road Number
1. Coming here is a therapy for Marjolaine, and it’s a good thing for
the foundation.”
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