Cambodian born journalist and survivor of the genocide under Pol Pot Dith Pran died of pancreatic cancer at a hospital in New Jersey earlier today. His longtime friend and fellow journalist Sydney Schanberg announced his passing to the press.Dith's journey to America is quite the story.
He had been working as a translator for reporter Shaunberg in the state capitol of Phnom Penh when the communist regime came to power and started relocating civilians to the countryside.
Shanberg was able to help his family escape to the U.S., but Dith remained in Cambodia until he was able to escape more than four years later. He eventually made it to America, where he was reunited with his family and eventually landed a job at The New York Times.
His harrowing odyssey became the basis first for an article and then a movie called 'The Killing Fields', while Schanberg went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for his work in the Cambodia.
The film takes its' title from a term that Dith coined after passing open graves filled with victims of Pot's purges as he fled across the countryside in search of freedom. It is estimated that as many as 2 million of Cambodia's 7 million inhabitants were liquidated under Pot's Khmer rouge regime, through execution, torture or forced starvation.
After surviving a genocide, overcoming so many obstacles, and finding his way to freedom nearly three decades earlier, Dith Pran succumbed to pancreatic cancer at the age of 65.
