Radio New Zealand news31 Mar 2008
Photojournalist Dith Pran, whose harrowing survival of genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge was dramatised in the film "The Killing Fields," died on Sunday. He was 65.
He died of pancreatic cancer at a hospital in New Jersey in the United States.
Dith, who used his fame to draw attention to his country's plight, spent the last weeks of his life in the hospital surrounded by family and friends.
Among them was Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sydney Schanberg, who worked with him for The New York Times during the Cambodian civil war and recalled him as a dogged journalist who was "always doing good deeds for people in the Buddhist tradition."
Best known for his depiction in the 1984 film The Killing Fields, Dith worked in Cambodia as a translator and journalist assisting Schanberg, who credits Dith with saving his life when they were arrested by the Khmer Rouge.
Dith was portrayed in The Killing Fields by Dr Haing Ngor, another survivor of Cambodia's genocide, who won an Academy Award for his role.
Forced into a labor camp when the radical Communists seized control of his homeland in 1975, Dith endured four years of starvation and torture. He lost more than 50 relatives to the Khmer Rouge, including his father, three brothers, a sister and their families.
They were among 1.7 million people who were executed or died of torture, disease or starvation under Pol Pot's 1975-1979 reign of terror as his dream of creating an agrarian peasant utopia turned into the Killing Fields nightmare.
After fleeing to Thailand in 1979, Dith moved to the US and worked as a photojournalist for The New York Times.
He also dedicated himself to speaking out against the Cambodian genocide and ran the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project to educate American students about Cambodia's dark period. He was appointed a goodwill ambassador for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in 1985.
Dith campaigned to bring the Khmer Rouge to trial for genocide. After nearly a decade of delays and drawn-out talks with the UN, trials began in earnest last year with charges against senior members of Pol Pot's regime.
"Part of my life is saving life," Dith said on a website devoted to raising awareness about the genocide in Cambodia. "I don't consider myself a politician or a hero. I'm a messenger. If Cambodia is to survive, she needs many voices."
Dith is survived by his companion, Bette Parslow, a daughter and three sons.
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