Wednesday, March 19, 2008
BY JUDY PEET Star-Ledger Staff (New Jersey, USA)
The world knows him as a powerful voice for the ghosts of the Cambodian Killing Fields, but Dith Pran speaks barely above a whisper now.
The man who survived starvation, torture and Pol Pot's murderous children's brigade is now fighting a new war from a hospital bed in New Jersey. This time the enemy is even more relentless: pancreatic cancer.
Friends and family say that if anyone can win this battle, it is Pran, 65, once described as a survivor "in the Darwinian sense," whose story was the basis for the Academy Award-winning 1984 movie, "The Killing Fields."
Pran, who lives in Woodbridge, says he intends to beat the odds, but ultimately, "this is my path and I must go where it takes me."
"We have already forced the enemy into the suburbs," Pran joked of his cancer last week as he rallied after finishing a round of radiation therapy. "Food, medicine and meditation are good soldiers, and I am ready to fight."
The healthy, round-faced man who danced at his son's wedding just last fall is now a gaunt 118 pounds. The only time in his adult life that he weighed less was when he staggered out of the jungle on the Thai border in 1979, malnourished, covered in scars and suffering from malaria.
But with typical Pran grace, he refuses to despair about his medical odds -- "I know how to recover from adversity." He plans to use his condition as a platform to campaign for early cancer screening. It is also a time to reflect on an extraordinary life well lived.
"You or I could never have survived what Pran has. And he is still one of the nicest people I ever met," said former New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg, 74, who insisted on sharing his 1976 Pulitzer Prize for covering the war in Cambodia with his translator, assistant and friend, Dith Pran.
"Pran saved my life, nearly at the cost of his," Schanberg added, as he bustled around Pran's hospital room, talking to staff, taking notes, reading messages from the legion of friends Pran has acquired in his 30-year photojournalism career. "There are no words to say what Pran means to me."
It is a poignant reversal from a time Pran took care of Schanberg. It was April 1975, in Cambodia, five years into civil war.
The capital, Phnom Penh, was surrounded by the Khmer Rouge, the Chinese-supported Communist insurgents. Most of the Americans had already left, but Schanberg, the Times correspondent, decided to stay and witness the city's fall.
Schanberg offered safe passage out to Pran, his wife and four children. Pran sent his family out on an American helicopter, but stayed behind to help his friend. According to Schanberg's 1980 account, "The Death and Life of Dith Pran," he and a handful of other journalists were arrested almost immediately and would have been killed if Pran had not intervened on their behalf.
He saved their lives, but was targeted by the Khmer Rouge, about to launch "the agrarian reform," which became a holocaust.
Schanberg and the other journalists were eventually granted safe passage to Thailand. Pran was forced into the Cambodian countryside, where he spent more than four years in conditions that destroyed more than 1.5 million people -- nearly a third of his country's inhabitants.
They were killed because they were connected to the former government, because they were intellectuals, or doctors or lawyers or teachers. People were killed by the Khmer Rouge because they wore glasses, held hands, gave rice to their dying children, or just because.
Those who didn't die were worked in labor camps 16 hours a day, planting rice that was given to China or hand-building dams and roads.
Those who didn't die from overwork and malnutrition were plagued by disease, poisonous insects and infection.
It was in this environment that Pran lived by hiding his intelligence, education and his strength. He withstood beatings and torture, disease and malnutrition. Fifty other members of his family, including, his father, three brothers, sister, nieces and nephews, did not survive.
But survival came at a huge cost, one that Pran thinks may now have come due.
"I ate bugs and even more disgusting things. I drank dirty water; who knows what kind of poisons were in it from all the (American) bombs? Maybe that is why the cancer comes, 30 years later," he says with a small, philosophical shrug.
Pran says he is not a religious man, but he has a Buddhist sense of destiny. "It was right for me to stay behind for Sydney, even if it means I am on this path now," he says with quiet dignity. "I want to save lives, including my own, but Cambodians believe we just rent this body.
"It is just a house for the spirit, and if the house is full of termites, it is time to leave."
Before locking the door, however, there is still cleanup to be done, Pran says. There are understandings to be reached with his first wife, Meoun, who brings him rice noodles every day, and his close friend of many years, Bette Parslow, who brings his little white dog, Gabby, to sit on his bed.
The women respect each other's place in Pran's life. Meoun, whose marriage to Pran was arranged when she was 16 years old, has been divorced from him for several years, "but a husband is like a kite. You let the string loose, but you never let go," she says.
She puts out pictures of their children, one of which is the family Red Cross passport photo when they escaped Phnom Penh in 1975. "I can still remember him standing there as we went to the helicopter. I didn't see him for four years, and when he came back, the nightmares were so bad."
She gently touches Pran's face, then tidies up the room. She pulls out get-well wishes from journalists around the world, acknowledging the contribution of this legendary humanitarian and photographer who has worked for the New York Times since 1980.
More visitors arrive with cameras. They are planning a documentary to be shot in his hospital room. It could be blended with footage of his exhaustive campaigning on behalf of Cambodian genocide victims and refugees, his 1989 Ellis Island Medal of Honor and his 1985 appointment as goodwill ambassador to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
There are visits with his children, grandchildren and dozens of colleagues who ignore hospital rules and wander in constantly. They are, after all, media.
There is the determination to use his late-life celebrity to help raise awareness about the "sneaky" ravages of pancreatic cancer, the same disease faced by actor Patrick Swayze and which claimed the lives of Michael Landon and Luciano Pavarotti.
"I thought because I didn't drink, smoke or do drugs that I was safe. But I ignored signs (weight loss, abdominal pains) until it was too late," Pran says. "I hope people learn from me and insist that your doctor test for cancer. Do it every six months.
"I am not afraid to die, but I hate to see a life wasted."
Ironically, Pran's illness was diagnosed on the eve of war crimes trials for the top surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge -- Pol Pot died of a heart attack in 1998 -- but he says it no longer matters. "It was all political, the same way America dropping bombs on Cambodia was political.
"It doesn't matter if death came from bombs or torture," Pran said. "What matters is that we remember and we keep talking and maybe some day we will mean it when we say about a holocaust: 'never again.'"
In 1989, Pran returned to Cambodia with a human rights commission. While there, he went back to his birthplace near Angkor Wat to finally inter the ashes of his parents, the only members of his family whose remains he could find after the war.
At the end of the Buddhist ceremony, the monks released a small turtle.
Recounting the ceremony in a Times article, Pran said: "By giving freedom to another living creature we gain merit and release from suffering, for ourselves or for the people we love, in the life to come."
Judy Peet may be reached at jpeet@starledger.com or (973) 392-5983.
The man who survived starvation, torture and Pol Pot's murderous children's brigade is now fighting a new war from a hospital bed in New Jersey. This time the enemy is even more relentless: pancreatic cancer.
Friends and family say that if anyone can win this battle, it is Pran, 65, once described as a survivor "in the Darwinian sense," whose story was the basis for the Academy Award-winning 1984 movie, "The Killing Fields."
Pran, who lives in Woodbridge, says he intends to beat the odds, but ultimately, "this is my path and I must go where it takes me."
"We have already forced the enemy into the suburbs," Pran joked of his cancer last week as he rallied after finishing a round of radiation therapy. "Food, medicine and meditation are good soldiers, and I am ready to fight."
The healthy, round-faced man who danced at his son's wedding just last fall is now a gaunt 118 pounds. The only time in his adult life that he weighed less was when he staggered out of the jungle on the Thai border in 1979, malnourished, covered in scars and suffering from malaria.
But with typical Pran grace, he refuses to despair about his medical odds -- "I know how to recover from adversity." He plans to use his condition as a platform to campaign for early cancer screening. It is also a time to reflect on an extraordinary life well lived.
"You or I could never have survived what Pran has. And he is still one of the nicest people I ever met," said former New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg, 74, who insisted on sharing his 1976 Pulitzer Prize for covering the war in Cambodia with his translator, assistant and friend, Dith Pran.
"Pran saved my life, nearly at the cost of his," Schanberg added, as he bustled around Pran's hospital room, talking to staff, taking notes, reading messages from the legion of friends Pran has acquired in his 30-year photojournalism career. "There are no words to say what Pran means to me."
It is a poignant reversal from a time Pran took care of Schanberg. It was April 1975, in Cambodia, five years into civil war.
The capital, Phnom Penh, was surrounded by the Khmer Rouge, the Chinese-supported Communist insurgents. Most of the Americans had already left, but Schanberg, the Times correspondent, decided to stay and witness the city's fall.
Schanberg offered safe passage out to Pran, his wife and four children. Pran sent his family out on an American helicopter, but stayed behind to help his friend. According to Schanberg's 1980 account, "The Death and Life of Dith Pran," he and a handful of other journalists were arrested almost immediately and would have been killed if Pran had not intervened on their behalf.
He saved their lives, but was targeted by the Khmer Rouge, about to launch "the agrarian reform," which became a holocaust.
Schanberg and the other journalists were eventually granted safe passage to Thailand. Pran was forced into the Cambodian countryside, where he spent more than four years in conditions that destroyed more than 1.5 million people -- nearly a third of his country's inhabitants.
They were killed because they were connected to the former government, because they were intellectuals, or doctors or lawyers or teachers. People were killed by the Khmer Rouge because they wore glasses, held hands, gave rice to their dying children, or just because.
Those who didn't die were worked in labor camps 16 hours a day, planting rice that was given to China or hand-building dams and roads.
Those who didn't die from overwork and malnutrition were plagued by disease, poisonous insects and infection.
It was in this environment that Pran lived by hiding his intelligence, education and his strength. He withstood beatings and torture, disease and malnutrition. Fifty other members of his family, including, his father, three brothers, sister, nieces and nephews, did not survive.
But survival came at a huge cost, one that Pran thinks may now have come due.
"I ate bugs and even more disgusting things. I drank dirty water; who knows what kind of poisons were in it from all the (American) bombs? Maybe that is why the cancer comes, 30 years later," he says with a small, philosophical shrug.
Pran says he is not a religious man, but he has a Buddhist sense of destiny. "It was right for me to stay behind for Sydney, even if it means I am on this path now," he says with quiet dignity. "I want to save lives, including my own, but Cambodians believe we just rent this body.
"It is just a house for the spirit, and if the house is full of termites, it is time to leave."
Before locking the door, however, there is still cleanup to be done, Pran says. There are understandings to be reached with his first wife, Meoun, who brings him rice noodles every day, and his close friend of many years, Bette Parslow, who brings his little white dog, Gabby, to sit on his bed.
The women respect each other's place in Pran's life. Meoun, whose marriage to Pran was arranged when she was 16 years old, has been divorced from him for several years, "but a husband is like a kite. You let the string loose, but you never let go," she says.
She puts out pictures of their children, one of which is the family Red Cross passport photo when they escaped Phnom Penh in 1975. "I can still remember him standing there as we went to the helicopter. I didn't see him for four years, and when he came back, the nightmares were so bad."
She gently touches Pran's face, then tidies up the room. She pulls out get-well wishes from journalists around the world, acknowledging the contribution of this legendary humanitarian and photographer who has worked for the New York Times since 1980.
More visitors arrive with cameras. They are planning a documentary to be shot in his hospital room. It could be blended with footage of his exhaustive campaigning on behalf of Cambodian genocide victims and refugees, his 1989 Ellis Island Medal of Honor and his 1985 appointment as goodwill ambassador to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
There are visits with his children, grandchildren and dozens of colleagues who ignore hospital rules and wander in constantly. They are, after all, media.
There is the determination to use his late-life celebrity to help raise awareness about the "sneaky" ravages of pancreatic cancer, the same disease faced by actor Patrick Swayze and which claimed the lives of Michael Landon and Luciano Pavarotti.
"I thought because I didn't drink, smoke or do drugs that I was safe. But I ignored signs (weight loss, abdominal pains) until it was too late," Pran says. "I hope people learn from me and insist that your doctor test for cancer. Do it every six months.
"I am not afraid to die, but I hate to see a life wasted."
Ironically, Pran's illness was diagnosed on the eve of war crimes trials for the top surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge -- Pol Pot died of a heart attack in 1998 -- but he says it no longer matters. "It was all political, the same way America dropping bombs on Cambodia was political.
"It doesn't matter if death came from bombs or torture," Pran said. "What matters is that we remember and we keep talking and maybe some day we will mean it when we say about a holocaust: 'never again.'"
In 1989, Pran returned to Cambodia with a human rights commission. While there, he went back to his birthplace near Angkor Wat to finally inter the ashes of his parents, the only members of his family whose remains he could find after the war.
At the end of the Buddhist ceremony, the monks released a small turtle.
Recounting the ceremony in a Times article, Pran said: "By giving freedom to another living creature we gain merit and release from suffering, for ourselves or for the people we love, in the life to come."
Judy Peet may be reached at jpeet@starledger.com or (973) 392-5983.
19 comments:
"The man who survived starvation, torture and Pol Pot's murderous children's brigade is now fighting a new war from a hospital bed in New Jersey. This time the enemy is even more relentless: pancreatic cancer."
How was he tortured, does anyone know?
You, coz you can't read English smart arse...Must have been drunk huh? ....lolz
Not really, but I do missed things now and then from skimming article at high speed. So, what did I missed?
For some killing fields survivors,Pran has been the voice of ghost of their loved ones for those years to call for justice.
He did for he thought a simple man could for his fellows,I am grateful indeed for his one man crusade.
Speedy recovery,and love from us all.
Loser of April 17,1975
Stop making up shit, will ya? what exactly did he do specifically.
607pm,
Vulgarity and profanity is not evryone language.
People of this type of mentality can't understand anything better than such derogatory attitude.
So what did you do beside,insult others?
May be it is time to read up some chronicles and write up what Pran has done for his moral duty.
I hope you are not Juanauary 7 fruit?
Actually, it is people who haven't got a clue about the purpose of language and make stupid assumption such as this who is directly responsible for destroying Cambodia time and time, and over and over again.
Nope, this is a debate, not a reading time. When someone posted a comment, we are allowed to question that comment. Only spammers and troll will avoid question, but not real educated person.
My beloved Khmers!
Now, I am elaborately comprehending how the ultimately important weapon of Youn and CPP to eliminate entirely the history during the Killingfield.
A man of understanding the Kampuchea's suffocating problems seeks out the house of those true patriots, which are more the stage of a nationalism than the palaces of vanity.
PS. Get well, soon, my beloved friend!
Wrong, we will only eliminate gorilla killing field in order to protect the integrity of our khmer history.
6:46 PM
Listen, you son-of-bitch! That's a plausible statement ... now, tell the rest of your spacies who prefer to be implausible in their assertion during the debate by calling us all sorts of names. If you could convince your spacies to stop names calling, we can cogently debate like a real man. In addition, should you show your intellectual capacity, and we will show you ours. However, if, at any time, you and the rest of you people exhibit in an uncivilized behavior, aggressive action from us will ensue. Do we have a deal?!
Or, is this too much for you people to handle?
You got it all backward, you cracked-pot (9:06). We got nothing against name calling. If you can't handle it, then you should go to the UN instead of coming here.
We've been to the UN numerous times, but we prefer to use diplomatic language when we were there. Whereas, when dealing with the people like yourself and the rest of your clans, we have to aggressively going after you people with rather draconian language, preferably.
646Pm,
Alright,debate and language comprehension as you twisted. Define your words: we,spammer,troll,please
Have you seen what is Spam?Do you why it's nicknamed Spam?
Never seen or heard debater used profanity and insults as form of resoultion or defense.
As for Dith Pran action,half of the planet have seen and heard of him.
Define "We" who are we and where were we when Pran did what he had done for victims?
After all, mannerism proves a person true human upbringing. Question,is 646pm a who-man or human?
Death to Viet/Yuon troller on Khmer site!
Death to Viet/Yuon invaders in Laos and Cambodia!
The F Viet/Yuon trollers and invaders are not here to debate!
They are in Laos and Cambodia to exterminate Laotian and Cambodian!
Go home you F Viet/Yuon!
6:46 is not human but a monkey. However, he has made a fool out of 12:24 (the westerner trained idiot) in all debates.
10:47, stop crying and go tell your mumy, okay?
What so important about DITH PRAN ?
8:41 AM
Do you know what I learned from Dith Pran?
Nothing!
Of course, the guy is a hero to himself!
Ah gorillas out of Cambodia!
Gorilla loves to make up stories.
Post a Comment