----------Anyone who wish to send well-wishers to
Mr. Dith Pran may do so by sending them to the following address:
Dith Pran
Roosevelt Care Center
Edison, N.J. 08837
USA
----------
By Stephen Wolgast
National Press Photographers Association
NEW YORK, NY (March 8, 2008) - Dith Pran, who survived torture under the genocidal Khmer Rouge after helping The New York Times’s Cambodia correspondent for three years, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in January. He was hospitalized for three weeks starting in mid-February, and was released to the Roosevelt Care Center in Edison, NJ, on Friday.
After escaping his country in 1979, Dith, 65, became a photographer for The New York Times in 1980, where he remains on staff. [His given name is Pran; Dith is his family name.] He was made famous by the 1984 film “The Killing Fields,” which depicts him in his role as a translator and journalist assisting Sydney Schanberg, then a foreign correspondent for The Times.
Schanberg covered the Cambodian civil war from 1972 until the Communists took over in 1975, creating a slave society, banishing city dwellers to work camps in the countryside and executing anyone perceived as educated. Most Western reporters left the country when the severity of the Khmer Rouge’s rule became apparent, but Schanberg and a handful of others stayed, with Dith continuing to assist.
Visiting a hospital with Schanberg and two other journalists, Dith and the others were arrested and held for execution. Dith saved their lives by convincing the Khmer Rouge that the reporters were neutral French nationals (they were not). Schanberg and the other foreigners soon left the country.
Dith was exiled to a labor camp, where one of the deprivations was being fed only one spoonful of rice a day. In October 1979 he walked to Thailand, where he gained his freedom. In January 1980, Schanberg wrote “The Death and Life of Dith Pran” in The New York Times Magazine. The memoir became the basis for the movie, and Dith’s renown was established.
During the Khmer Rouge regime, about 1.5 million Cambodians were killed or starved to death by the government. Dith, who was born September 27, 1942, lost 50 family members to the Khmer Rouge, including his parents, three brothers, a sister and their families. Only one sister survived.
Dith founded the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project to educate American students about the mass killings. He has testified before U.S. House and Senate subcommittees on East Asia and the Pacific, and was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 1985.
In 1997 he compiled “Children of Cambodia’s Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors” (Yale). The child witnesses, now grown up, write of babies killed by bayonets and adults killed with the backs of hoes — to save on bullets. In a review of the book in The New York Times, Lance Gould writes, “The overwhelming simplicity of the contributors’ recollections builds a solid, irrefutable censure of one of humanity’s most shocking crimes.”
Despite his accolades, including four honorary doctorates, Dith remains humble and dedicated to his homeland. “Part of my life is saving life. I don't consider myself a politician or a hero. I’m a messenger. If Cambodia is to survive, she needs many voices.”
After escaping his country in 1979, Dith, 65, became a photographer for The New York Times in 1980, where he remains on staff. [His given name is Pran; Dith is his family name.] He was made famous by the 1984 film “The Killing Fields,” which depicts him in his role as a translator and journalist assisting Sydney Schanberg, then a foreign correspondent for The Times.
Schanberg covered the Cambodian civil war from 1972 until the Communists took over in 1975, creating a slave society, banishing city dwellers to work camps in the countryside and executing anyone perceived as educated. Most Western reporters left the country when the severity of the Khmer Rouge’s rule became apparent, but Schanberg and a handful of others stayed, with Dith continuing to assist.
Visiting a hospital with Schanberg and two other journalists, Dith and the others were arrested and held for execution. Dith saved their lives by convincing the Khmer Rouge that the reporters were neutral French nationals (they were not). Schanberg and the other foreigners soon left the country.
Dith was exiled to a labor camp, where one of the deprivations was being fed only one spoonful of rice a day. In October 1979 he walked to Thailand, where he gained his freedom. In January 1980, Schanberg wrote “The Death and Life of Dith Pran” in The New York Times Magazine. The memoir became the basis for the movie, and Dith’s renown was established.
During the Khmer Rouge regime, about 1.5 million Cambodians were killed or starved to death by the government. Dith, who was born September 27, 1942, lost 50 family members to the Khmer Rouge, including his parents, three brothers, a sister and their families. Only one sister survived.
Dith founded the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project to educate American students about the mass killings. He has testified before U.S. House and Senate subcommittees on East Asia and the Pacific, and was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 1985.
In 1997 he compiled “Children of Cambodia’s Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors” (Yale). The child witnesses, now grown up, write of babies killed by bayonets and adults killed with the backs of hoes — to save on bullets. In a review of the book in The New York Times, Lance Gould writes, “The overwhelming simplicity of the contributors’ recollections builds a solid, irrefutable censure of one of humanity’s most shocking crimes.”
Despite his accolades, including four honorary doctorates, Dith remains humble and dedicated to his homeland. “Part of my life is saving life. I don't consider myself a politician or a hero. I’m a messenger. If Cambodia is to survive, she needs many voices.”
7 comments:
You must continue to live, Mr. Dith Pran. I wish you quick recovery.
LAO Mong Hay, Hong Kong
may god help him. i suggest he seeks the best chemotherapy for this cancer asap! it could save his life!
Those who tried to westernize Khmer people in Cambodia should died the most painful dead ever known to anyone.
Pancreatic cancer is the deadliest cancer there is. Most people won't live more than 6 months after diagnosis.
Our hearts and prayers are with Mr. Dith Pran and his family.
Yeah, and I hope it is the most painful dead ever for anyone who try to wipe out Khmer culture.
Such as Vienamese's clowns shall be dead the most painful way.
And who is vietnamese's clown? It ah Khmer lop lop follow ah Ly ngoc Diep diep hiding behind Khmer Republic. ah Ly Diep never be Khmer, he's an outcaster, intruder. Damn it. Need more?
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