PHNOM PENH, Cambodia – Dith Pran, photojournalist and survivor of the Khmer Rouge Regime, died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 65 years old. Before the Khmer Rouge Regime took power in 1975, Dith Pran worked with the NY Times taking notes, translating, and taking pictures. After the Khmer Rouge Regime took power, Dith Pran became a prisoner. Although he and his family had the opportunity to flee Cambodia, Dith Pran choose to stay and let his family go because he believed that “his country could be saved only if other countries grasped the gathering tragedy and responded.”

Soon afterwards, he was sent to the countryside to work all day in the fields. He survived in the countryside doing backbreaking labor and eating only a tablespoon of rice a day for four years. Dith Pran avoiding summary execution by hiding his education, passing himself as a taxi driver, and throwing all his money away. In 1978 he returned to his hometown of Siem Reap and discovered that 50 members of his family had been killed. The wells had been filled with skulls and bones. In 1979 Dith Pran escaped the country over the Thai border and then later come to New York to continue his journalistic career.

For more information, please see:

The NY Times – Dith Pran, Photojournalist and Survivor of the Killing Fields, Dies at 65 – 31 March 2008