Tuesday, 1 April 2008

Dogged survivor of Khmer Rouge's killing fields

The Australian
April 01, 2008

Dith PranJournalist. Born Siem Reap, Cambodia, September 27, 1942. Died New Jersey, US, March 30, aged 65.

DITH Pran was the interpreter and journalist whose demonstration of friendship and endurance in the face of unspeakable atrocity inspired the film The Killing Fields. The film, which won three Oscars, portrayed how the Cambodian-born Dith risked his life helping to cover the arrival of the murderous Khmer Rouge in Pnomh Penh in 1975. He survived the holocaust that killed 30 to 40 per cent of his compatriots, eventually making it out of the country and becoming a photojournalist at The New York Times.

Dith was born in 1942 in Siem Reap, Cambodia, in the shadow of the ruined temples of Angkor Wat. At the time, the country, which was part of French Indochina, was under occupation by the Japanese, and Dith's father was a senior public works official.

Dith learned French at school and taught himself English privately. After leaving school in 1960, Dith became an interpreter for the US military, a job that ended five years later when the Americans left Cambodia. He worked as an interpreter a British film crew and tourists, and as a hotel receptionist.

When civil war broke out between the forces of US-backed dictator Lon Nol, who had seized power in Phnom Penh in 1970, and the newly born Khmer Rouge, the tourism trade was destroyed and Dith moved with his family to the capital.

There he met Craig Whitney, the Saigon bureau chief for The New York Times, and began working as an interpreter and guide for journalists. In 1972 the New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg, who had been working in Singapore, transferred to Cambodia, and was met at the airport by Dith. The two became good friends, and soon Dith was working exclusively with Schanberg.

The Khmer Rouge became stronger and more ruthless, and by spring of 1975 chaos had engulfed Cambodia. The US had already withdrawn from Vietnam and, with Phnom Penh looking sure to fall too, the Americans decided to leave.

On April 12 the capital was evacuated of all American personnel and thousands of Cambodians sought to escape. Dith loaded his wife and their four children on to a US truck, but decided to stay with Schanberg to cover the story as the Khmer Rouge took over. Both Schanberg and Dith assumed that once the Khmer Rouge had taken hold of Phnom Penh peace would ensue. They were wrong. On April 17 the Khmer Rouge began the bloody emptying of the capital, forcing the city dwellers, some 60 per cent of Cambodia's 5 million population, out into the fields.

Dith and Schanberg went to investigate some of the casualties at a hospital. As they were leaving, they were accosted by troops, who rounded them up into an armoured vehicle. The Westerners complied, but Dith spent time arguing with the troops before getting in.

The group was later released, but it was only afterwards that Schanberg, who had thought Dith was arguing that he didn't want to get into the vehicle, learned that Dith had saved his life: the soldiers had been telling Dith to leave because they did not want him to see them shoot the Westerners, but Dith had risked his life by refusing to go.

Schanberg and his colleagues tried to return the favour later by having a fake US passport made to allow Dith to leave Cambodia. However, it did not pass muster, and Dith was forced to remain there while Schanberg and other foreign nationals left.

Schanberg supported Dith's family, who had earlier made it to New York, and through intermediaries at border camps in Thailand circulated photographs of his lost friend. Dith had become absorbed into the new Cambodia, or Kampuchea as the Khmer Rouge had renamed it.

Fearing the death that befell many seen as intellectuals, he cast off any sign, such as a watch, that might jeopardise his life, and masqueraded as an impoverished peasant. He crippled his vocabulary and went about giving the appearance of a simple villager.

Dith was put to work in the rice paddies, performing back-breaking labour during the day and undergoing political indoctrination by night. Food rations were just spoonfuls of rice a day and Dith and other villagers were reduced to eating bark, snakes and rats to survive.

In 1976 Schanberg was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the beginning of a holocaust that ultimately led to the deaths of between 1.5 million and 2 million Cambodians. He accepted it on behalf of Dith aswell.

In late 1977 Dith was given the privilege of relocating within the country and he became a house servant for a commune chief in the village of Bat Dangkor. In January 1979, when the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and removed the Khmer Rouge, Dith went back to Siem Reap, where he was given a position as a village administrative chief. He dubbed the area "the killing fields", stretches of green where corpses had nourished the ground. Fifty members of his family had, he discovered, died there.

Dith met a group of Eastern European reporters through whom he managed to get a message to Schanberg. But meanwhile the Vietnamese learned that Dith had been involved with the press, and Dith decided it was time to try to escape.

On July 29, 1979 he set out to walk the 100km of landmines, booby traps and Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge forces that lay between him and the Thai border. On October 3 he arrived in Thailand where he asked a US official to contact Schanberg, who met him there on October 9.

Dith moved to the US where he was reunited with his family and was made a trainee photographer on The New York Times. He went on to a lengthy and successful career with the paper as a photojournalist.

He became a US citizen in 1986, and devoted his spare time to helping to ensure that nobody forgot the holocaust. Inevitably, he felt robbed by the death of Pol Pot in 1988 before justice could be served, but the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project continues to maintain the memory of the slaughter.

Dith is survived by his partner Bette Parslow, three sons and a daughter by his former wife, Meoun Ser.

The Times

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