François Bizot
Autor(a) de The Gate
About the Author
Francois Bizot is the Director of Studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes-etudes and holds the chair in Southeast Asian Buddhism at the Sorbonne.
Image credit: Francois Bizot At Home At The Ecole Francaise D'Extreme Orient In Chiang Mai. On February 28Th, 2006. In Chiang Mai, China
Obras por François Bizot
Associated Works
Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison (1999) — Prefácio, algumas edições — 136 exemplares
Etiquetado
Conhecimento Comum
- Nome canónico
- Bizot, François
- Data de nascimento
- 1940-02-08
- Sexo
- male
- Nacionalidade
- Frankrijk
- País (no mapa)
- France
- Local de nascimento
- Nancy, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Grand-Est, France
- Locais de residência
- Vientiane, Laos (1994)
Paris, Île de France, France (1987)
Chiang Mai, Thaïlande (1976)
Phnom Penh, Cambodge (1970|1975)
Srah Srang, Angkor (1965|1970)
Nancy, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Grand-Est, France - Educação
- Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris (Auditeur)
Ecole des géomètres de Nancy (1962|1965)
Collège de la Malgrange, Jarville, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Grand-Est, France - Ocupações
- Writer
Professor in the history of budism, university of Paris - Relações
- Condominas, Georges (Professeur)
Filliozat, Jean (Professeur)
Bareau, André (Professeur) - Organizações
- University of Paris
École française d'Extrême-Orient
Fatal error: Call to undefined function isLitsy() in /var/www/html/inc_magicDB.php on line 425- François Bizot (born February 8, 1940 in Nancy, France), is the only Westerner to have survived imprisonment by the Khmer Rouge.
Bizot arrived in Cambodia in 1965 to study Buddhism practiced in the countryside. He traveled extensively around Cambodia, researching the history and customs of its dominant religion. He speaks fluent Khmer, French and English and was married to a Cambodian with whom he had a daughter, Hélène, in 1968. When the Vietnam War spilled into Cambodia, Bizot was employed at the Angkor Conservation Office, restoring ceramics and bronzes.
Bizot, at first, welcomed the American intervention in Cambodia, hoping that they might counter the rising influence of the Communists. "But their irresponsibility, the inexcusable naivete, even their cynicism, frequently aroused more fury and outrage in me than did the lies of the Communists. Throughout those years of war, as I frantically scoured the hinterland for the old manuscripts that the heads of monasteries had secreted in lacquered chests, I witnessed the Americans' imperviousness to the realities of Cambodia," wrote Bizot in his memoirs of the time. In October 1971, Bizot and his two Cambodian colleagues were captured by the Khmer Rouge. During his captivity on charges of being a CIA agent at the Khmer Rouge Camp M.13 at Anlong Veng, he developed a strangely close relationship with his captor, Comrade Duch, who later became the Director of the infamous Tuol Sleng concentration camp in Phnom Penh. During his three-month imprisonment he came to understand the true genocidal nature of the Khmer Rouge long before other outsiders. He was finally released in December 1971 after Comrade Duch wrote a detailed report that convinced the Khmer Rouge leadership of Bizot's innocence. Bizot's Cambodian colleagues were executed soon after Bizot's release. Phnom Penh. Because of his fluency in Khmer, he soon became the primary point of contact and unofficial translator between the embassy officials and the Khmer Rouge. He left Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge expelled all foreigners and sealed off Cambodia's borders. He returned to Cambodia in 2003 and met his former captor Duch, who was waiting for his trial for crimes against humanity, for about one hour and a half (a few minutes of the encounter were put on film). These moments can be seen in the documentary "Derrière Le Portail" ("Behind The Gate"). Comrade Duch was on trial at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia and received a 35 year sentence, later increased to life from an appeal. Bizot was the first witness to testify at the trial.
Bizot is Emeritus Professor at the École française d'Extrême-Orient.
Membros
Críticas
Prémios
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Estatísticas
- Obras
- 6
- Also by
- 1
- Membros
- 450
- Popularidade
- #54,506
- Avaliação
- 3.8
- Críticas
- 10
- ISBN
- 33
- Línguas
- 7
Bizot was in Cambodia researching Khmer Buddhist traditions and was traveling around the areas being taken over by the Khmer Rouge with two Cambodian assistants when he was taken by the Khmer military and sent to a prison in the countryside, really just a makeshift camp in the jungle where the prisoners were kept locked in ankle stocks and lying in rows. Because Bizot was too large for the shackles and to keep him isolated, he was chained up near the entrance to the camp. His main interactions were with the camp leader, a man who would later be infamous for being in charge of torture, but with whom Bizot formed a sort of relationship, one that led to him finally being released a few months later. Back in Phnom Penh, he takes shelter in the French embassy and given his fluency in Khmer, he soon took on a leadership position. He's also one of the few willing to venture out of the embassy in search of the foreigners who chose not to come to the embassy earlier or to search for supplies. Eventually, a risky exit is planned, a logistical nightmare involving moving over a thousand people through Khmer-held territory into Thailand.
Bizot is not a likeable man and it's to his credit that he makes no attempt to make himself so. He's arrogant and he holds attitudes and ideas about the Cambodians, and especially a fetishization of the women, that he might be encouraged to examine and rethink today, but that doesn't change the value of this document of an important and terrifying time in history.… (mais)