The Bellingham Herald

Washington State
Wednesday, February 10, 1999e Bellingham Herald, page A1 (jumps to A2)

Dith Pran recalls the killing fields
PEOPLE: "I'm no politician. I'm not even a hero. I'm a messenger."

BY MARY LANE GALLAGHER
The Bellingham Herald

Dith Pran wasn't offering a history lesson Tuesday night when he told a
Western Washington University audience about the genocide that killed 2
million of his fellow Cambodians during the 1970s.

Dith, whose survival was chronicled in the 1984 film "The Killing Fields,"
said telling his story is his mission in hopes of keeping it from happening
again.

"I'm no politician. I'm not even a hero," Dith told the audience of several
hundred students and others in Western's Performing Arts Center. "I'm a
messenger." Dith, who now lives in New Jersey, explained to the audience
that in Cambodian tradition, his family name, Dith, comes before his given name,
Pran.

"It's very important that we all study the genocide," said Dith, "because in
this world, it happens again and again." Dith referred to genocidal killings
in the former Yugoslavia, Africa and in Europe during World War II.

"I don't want the next generation to make a mistake by allowing this
holocaust to happen again," he said.

The world needs to be on the lookout for another genocide the way city
dwellers are watchful for pickpockets, Dith said. "Race doesn't mean
anything," he said. "If you're a human being, you have to be careful."

Dith was an interpreter working for the New York Times with writer Sydney
Schanberg when the Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975, near the end of the
Vietnam War.

Almost overnight, Dith said, the Khmer Rouge ordered people to leave their
homes in the cities. Everyone from 6-year-olds to the elderly were put to
work in countryside labor camps. Families were separated and starvation was
rampant, he said. In the end, 2 million Cambodians died, including Dith's
father, uncle, three brothers, a sister and a cousin.

"In the whole generation, only two survived," he said.

Dith, 56, said he survived by eating anything he could find, including
grasshoppers, termites and a wolf caught in a trap.

"Wolf doesn't taste like chicken," said Dith, drawing one of evening's few
moments of laughter.

He also lived by thinking fast and looking stupid, he said. Anyone with an
education, including monks, college students and doctors, were likely to
draw suspicion from the Khmer Rouge and be killed.

"You learn to keep your mouth shut," he said. "You pray a lot inside your
heart. No one can stop you from praying."

He now runs the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project. He speaks about the
Cambodian genocide to students and other groups around the country. He also
has recently written a book, "Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memoirs
by Survivors," in which he interviewed 29 children about their experiences
under the Khmer Rouge regime. And he maintains a web site: www.dithpran.org.

Audience members asked Dith about his thoughts on the current situation in
Cambodia, where two elderly Khmer officials, Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea,
surrendered in December to the Cambodian government.

The Khmer officials are resisting calls for an international tribunal for an
accounting of their actions, Dith said. And just recently, the Cambodian
government told the United Nations that international aid for such a trial
would be better spent helping the impoverished Cambodian people, he said.

But, Dith said, the Khmer Rouge leaders have to go to trial - not for
vengeance, but so that they can explain to the Cambodian people and the
world why so many people died under their rule.

Cambodians "cannot live without justice," Dith said. "We have no food, but
we still have problems in our hearts, too."

More news & archives at our websites;
The Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project, Inc
P.O. Box 1616
Woodbridge, New Jersey 07095
Email: Dith Pran
Website:http://www.DithPran.org
Website:http://www.Cambodian.com