Dith Pran, a photojournalist whose harrowing experience in a Cambodian forced labour camp under the Khmer Rouge was dramatised in the film ‘The Killing Fields,’ has died at the age of 65.
He died of pancreatic cancer at a New Brunswick, New Jersey hospital
Mr Dith spent the last weeks of his life in the hospital surrounded by family and friends, including Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sydney Schanberg, who worked with him for The New York Times during the Cambodian civil war.
His connection with the newspaper began when he worked with Mr Schanberg from 1972 to 1975 covering the Cambodian civil war, a conflict that had spilled over from neighboring Vietnam.
When US citizens were evacuated from Phnom Penh on April 12, 1975, Mr Dith and Mr Schanberg stayed behind to cover the fall of the city to the communist Khmer Rouge, who were then closing in on the capital.
Mr Schanberg, Mr Dith and two other reporters were arrested by the Khmer Rouge and held for execution, but Mr Dith managed to persuade his captives that the three Westerners were neutral French journalists.
The four were later released and sought refuge in the French embassy until foreigners there were asked to surrender their passports.
Mr Dith was then exiled to the forced labour camps in rural Cambodia that became known as the killing fields, where he suffered starvation and torture for four years.
Up to two million people died of lack of food and overwork or were executed by the regime, which dismantled Cambodian society in an effort to forge a radical agrarian utopia.
Mr Schanberg, meanwhile, went on to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his coverage of the conflict, accepting the award for himself and Mr Dith, who only managed to escaped to freedom in Thailand in 1979.
