Photojournalist Dith Pran, speaks at a meeting of the National Cambodia Crisis Committee at the White House as First Lady Rosalynn Carter (3rd R), wife of President Jimmy Carter, looks on in this January 29, 1980 file photo. Pran, whose harrowing experiences in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge were dramatized in the film 'The Killing Fields,' died on Sunday at the age of 65. He died of pancreatic cancer at a New Brunswick, New Jersey, hospital, The New York Times said on its Web site. (The New York Times/Handout/Reuters)By KER MUNTHIT
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Dith Pran, the Cambodian journalist whose harrowing tale of survival was told in the movie "The Killing Fields," helped awaken the world to the Khmer Rouge's atrocities, people in his homeland said Monday.
Dith Pran, 65, died Sunday 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 reporter.
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."
While Dith Pran was just one of the millions of people who suffered under the Khmer Rouge, he was "the pioneer" in exposing the group's atrocities, said Chea Vannath, the former director of the nonprofit Center for Social Development.
"What was special about him is that he brought the Khmer Rouge's "killing fields" to the world," she 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."
Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, an independent center researching the Khmer Rouge's crimes, 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," he 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.
Dith Pran, 65, died Sunday 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 reporter.
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."
While Dith Pran was just one of the millions of people who suffered under the Khmer Rouge, he was "the pioneer" in exposing the group's atrocities, said Chea Vannath, the former director of the nonprofit Center for Social Development.
"What was special about him is that he brought the Khmer Rouge's "killing fields" to the world," she 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."
Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, an independent center researching the Khmer Rouge's crimes, 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," he 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.
7 comments:
Burn in hell, traitor!
Bless you. 65 years old had done more good things to the people than a living 80+ KR leaders.
More good things, my arse. Like what?
Change is coming, HunSen cannot or will not live to 99 more years as he wanted to be or his cronyism wanted him to stay in power forever. I am glad that Mr. Dith Pran exposed the regime to the world. It Will Be Done!
The world is watching, weather you like it or not 457am.
Yeah, but PM certainly can make 98 more years.
Thanks God that Cambodia has one or two true man like Mr. Pran left to tell the world!!! Remember that none of the criminal wants it to be known or heard. They hate it! hate it! & hate it to the core! and the one up above is no exception.
what about the money that the movies exposed to the world...do the cambodian people benefit from these or just another money making or it just keeping the vietcong and the CPP stay longer and exposes more garbages and aids for the cambodian people. by the way...when hun sen said he will stay long in power..it means to keep the yuon control khmer lands longer, and he(hunsen) knew that he's not gonna live that long, but the yuon will stay longer and longer for sure if khmer people still asleep or still in Kareoke with young girls. remember that the communists people have more discipline than us. they learn tactics and protect their people, not like the CPP they only know how to threat and kill the innocents.
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