Dith Pran

Cambodian-born journalist, photographer, and activist

• Pronunciation: PRAHN
• Born: September 23, 1942
• Birthplace: Siem Reap, French Indochina (now Cambodia)
• Died: March 30, 2008
• Place of death: New Brunswick, New Jersey

A photojournalist and activist, Dith Pran is best known for surviving the Cambodian genocide of the 1970s and his subsequent commitment to raising awareness of the atrocities committed by Communist dictator Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge regime. The award-winning 1984 film The Killing Fields is based on his experiences in Cambodia.

Areas of achievement: Journalism, photography, activism

Early Life

One of six children, Dith Pran was born in 1942 in Siem Reap, Cambodia, then part of French Indochina. His father, Dith Proeung, supervised road construction, and the family was comfortably middle class. Dith Pran attended local schools and spoke both French and English.

In the 1960s, Dith became an interpreter for the United States Military Assistance Command in Cambodia. The United States had stationed forces in Cambodia as a result of American involvement in the war in neighboring Vietnam. Dith also worked in tourism, taking a position at a hotel near the historic temples of Angkor Wat, which were located near Siem Reap and attracted international interest. He married his first wife, Ser Moeun Dith, and the couple later had four children.

By 1970, Cambodia had become politically unstable. War broke out between two factions, the US-backed Lon Nol and Pol Pot’s communist Khmer Rouge; Lon Nol took control of capital city, Phnom Penh. During this upheaval, Dith began to work as a war correspondent. The New York Times hired him as a guide and interpreter for American reporters, one of whom was Sydney Schanberg. Dith soon began to work exclusively with Schanberg and learned to take photographs, leading to a career as a photojournalist. The two forged a successful working partnership and a lifelong friendship. In 1976, Schanberg was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of events in Cambodia.

As the political situation in Cambodia worsened, all Americans in the country were forced to leave. In 1975, Dith, Schanberg, and two other journalists were arrested by the Khmer Rouge and nearly killed, but Dith was able to save Schanberg’s life and those of his companions by convincing the soldiers that the journalists were not involved in the conflict. The evacuation of all Americans, including journalists and US government personnel, was completed by the time the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh later that year. Dith and Schanberg arranged for Dith’s wife and children to leave Cambodia and immigrate to the United States, but Dith remained in Cambodia.

Life’s Work

Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge sought to rid Cambodia of Western and capitalist influences and establish an agrarian society. In the process, an estimated two million citizens, a significant portion of the country’s population, were killed by the Khmer Rouge or died due to food and medicine shortages. The sites of the mass killings perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge later became known as the “killing fields.”

Dith was sent to a prison camp and conscripted into slave labor in the country’s rice paddies. As an educated Cambodian with ties to the United States, he embodied the influences that the regime was attempting to eliminate. In order to survive, Dith pretended to be an uneducated peasant. Along with his fellow prisoners, he was tortured and nearly starved to death. He was freed after Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia in 1978, overthrowing the Khmer Rouge. However, Dith feared that the communist Vietnamese regime would punish him for his ties to the United States, and he fled to Thailand. While there he was able to reconnect with Schanberg, and with his friend’s help, he traveled to the United States and reunited with his family in San Francisco in 1979.

Dith took a position as a photojournalist for the New York Times in 1980 and became a citizen of the United States in 1986. During this time, he committed himself to raising awareness of the Cambodian genocide through speaking engagements, publications, and other activist efforts. He addressed United Nations councils, appeared before the subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs in Congress, and spoke at countless schools and universities. He also founded the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project, an organization with the goal of educating the world about the Khmer Rouge’s brutality toward the Cambodian people.

Dith and his first wife divorced, and he married Kim DePaul, who became executive director of the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project; they later divorced as well, though DePaul remained devoted to the project. In 1997, Dith and DePaul published Children of Cambodia’s Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors, which collects memoirs written by Cambodians who were children during the reign of the Khmer Rouge.

Dith became well known in the United States following Schanberg’s 1980 publication of the article “The Death and Life of Dith Pran” in the New York Times. Schanberg later expanded the piece into a book of the same title, published in 1985, chronicling the horrors of the Cambodian war and the partnership he forged with Dith prior to leaving Cambodia. The newspaper piece inspired the creation of the film The Killing Fields, directed by Roland Joffé and released in 1984. The film stars Sam Waterston as Schanberg and Haing S. Ngor as Dith; like Dith, Ngor had been forced to work in labor camps and eventually fled to Thailand. Depicting the genocide and Khmer Rouge regime in a graphic and shocking manner, the film helped raise awareness of the atrocities committed in Cambodia, conveying Dith’s story to a wide audience. The Killing Fields was both financially successful and critically acclaimed, and it won numerous awards, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Ngor’s portrayal of Dith.

Dith died of cancer in 2008 at the age of sixty-five.

Significance

Through his photojournalism, work with the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project, and inspiration for The Killing Fields, Dith played a significant role in raising public awareness of the Cambodian genocide in the United States and elsewhere. He received many awards for his work, including the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, and was awarded several honorary degrees. Because of the efforts of Dith and other survivors and the resulting international awareness of the Cambodian genocide, former Khmer Rouge officials have been prosecuted for crimes against humanity by Cambodian courts and the United Nations.

Bibliography

DePaul, Kim, ed. Children of Cambodia’s Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors. New Haven: Yale UP, 1997. Print. Presents accounts, written by survivors and compiled by Dith, of the Cambodian genocide.

Martin, Douglas. “Dith Pran, Photojournalist and Survivor of the Killing Fields, Dies at Sixty-Five.” New York Times. New York Times, 31 Mar. 2008. Web. 24 Feb. 2012. Discusses Dith’s experiences in Cambodia, career as a photojournalist, and work as an activist.

Schanberg, Sidney H. Beyond the Killing Fields: War Writings. Ed. Robert Miraldi. Washington: Potomac, 2010. Print. Compiles Schanberg’s writings on war, including his original piece on Dith.

---. The Death and Life of Dith Pran. New York: Viking, 1985. Print. Documents Dith’s experiences and the atrocities that occurred in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime.