Cambodia: Cambodians Call Dith Pran Pioneer In Awakening World To
Khmer Rouge's 'Killing Fields'
News 2008-03-31 19:34
PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA: Dith Pran, the Cambodian journalist whose
harrowing tale of survival was told in the movie "The Killing Fields,"
was a pioneer in awakening the world to the Khmer Rouge's atrocities,
people in his homeland said Monday (31 Mar).
Dith Pran, 65, died Sunday (30 Mar) of pancreatic cancer at a New
Jersey hospital, according to Sydney Schanberg, his former colleague
at The New York Times whose intertwined story was also told in the
1984 film.
Dith Pran was working as an interpreter and assistant for Schanberg in
Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital, when the Khmer Rouge took power in
April 1975. One of the movie's most tense scenes shows him risking his
life to help save the Times re****ter.
Schanberg was later evacuated from Cambodia with other Westerners,
while Dith Pran stayed behind and struggled to survive under the
brutal Khmer Rouge regime.
The communist group's radical policies while in power in 1975-79 led
to the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people from hunger, disease,
overwork and execution. The sites where their bodies were
unceremoniously disposed of became known as "killing fields."
Dith Pran was prominent among overseas Cambodians, but inside his
homeland only movie-lovers and historians are familiar with his name,
said Chea Vannath, the former director of the nonprofit Center for
Social Development, who knows his story from the movie.
While he was just one of the millions of traumatized survivors of the
Khmer Rouge, she said that through the movie, he was "the pioneer" in
exposing the Khmer Rouge's atrocities.
"What was special about him is that he brought the Khmer Rouge's
"killing fields" to the world," Chea Vannath said.
Information Minister Khieu Kanharith agreed that Dith Pran "was the
one who played a key role for the world to become conscious about the
killing fields."
Despite the fame that came with the release of the movie, "he was
humble, unlike other well-known people," said Khieu Kanharith,
recalling an encounter with Dith Pran in Cambodia in the early 1990s.
Youk Chhang, director of the Do***entation Center of Cambodia, an
independent center researching the Khmer Rouge's crimes, agreed that
most of his countrymen would not know who Dith Pran was.
He said it was "a very sad thing" that Dith Pran had died before
Cambodia's U.N.-backed genocide tribunal begins trying detained former
Khmer Rouge leaders for their alleged roles in the atrocities.
But Dith Pran "continues to be with us now and in the future for the
cause of genocide justice," Youk Chhang said.
Dith Pran managed to escape to Thailand in 1979 after Vietnamese
forces invaded Cambodia to oust the Khmer Rouge. He was later reunited
with his family in the United States, where they had settled as
refugees, and he became a photographer for the Times. (By KER MUNTHIT/
AP)
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