Dith Pran
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Dith Pran (Template:Langx; 23 September 1942 – 30 March 2008) was a Cambodian-American photojournalist. He was a refugee and survivor of the Cambodian genocide and the subject of the film The Killing Fields (1984).
Early lifeEdit
Dith was born in Siem Reap, Cambodia. His father worked as a public works official.<ref name=nyt>Template:Cite news</ref> He learned French at school and taught himself English.Template:Cn
The United States Army hired him as a translator but after his ties with the United States were severed, Dith worked with a British film crew for the film Lord Jim and then as a hotel receptionist.<ref name=nyt/>
Cambodian genocideEdit
In 1975, Dith and New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg stayed behind in Cambodia to cover the fall of the capital Phnom Penh to the Communist Khmer Rouge.<ref name=nyt/> Schanberg and other foreign reporters were allowed to leave the country, but Dith was not.<ref name=nyt/> Due to the persecution of intellectuals during the genocide, he hid the fact that he was educated or that he knew Americans, and pretended that he had been a taxi driver.<ref name=nyt/> When Cambodians were forced to work in labour camps, Dith had to endure four years of starvation and torture before Vietnam overthrew the Khmer Rouge on 7 January 1979.<ref name=nyt/> He coined the phrase "killing fields" to refer to the clusters of corpses and skeletal remains of victims he encountered during his Template:Convert escape. His three brothers and one sister were killed in Cambodia.Template:Citation needed
Dith returned to Siem Reap where he learned that 50 members of his family had died.<ref name=nyt/> The Vietnamese had made him village chief, but he feared they would discover his US ties, and he escaped to Thailand on 3 October 1979.<ref name=nyt/>
Career in the United StatesEdit
After Schanberg learned that Dith had made it to Thailand, he flew halfway around the world, and they had a joyful reunion there. Schanberg brought Dith back to the United States to reunite him with his family, and in 1980 Dith joined his paper, The New York Times, where he worked as a photojournalist.<ref name="Brown" /> He gained worldwide recognition after the 1984 release of the film The Killing Fields about his experiences under the Khmer Rouge. He was portrayed in the film by first-time actor and fellow survivor Haing S. Ngor (1940–1996), who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance. He campaigned for recognition of the Cambodian genocide victims, especially as founder and president of the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project.<ref name="Brown" /> He was a recipient of an Ellis Island Medal of Honor in 1998 and the Award of Excellence of the International Center.
Personal lifeEdit
In 1986, he became a U.S. citizen with his then wife Ser Moeun Dith, whom he later divorced. He then married Kim DePaul but they also divorced.<ref name=nyt/>
DeathEdit
On 30 March 2008, Dith died, aged 65, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, having been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer three months earlier.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="Brown">Template:Cite news</ref> He was living in Woodbridge, New Jersey.<ref name=nyt/><ref name=pyle>Template:Cite news</ref>
WorksEdit
ReferencesEdit
External linksEdit
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- The Last Word of Dith Pran New York Times. March 30, 2008. Video Interview of Dith Pran.
- Obituaries: