By PAMELA BATZEL, Staff Writer November 01, 2002

Staff photo by Amy Dragoo Dith Pran, a survivor of the Cambodian killing

fields, speaks to more than 250 people at West Chester University. He

answered questions about the United States' role in the destruction of

Cambodia, and the possible war with Iraq

WEST CHESTER -- Dith Pran, a famous survivor of the Cambodian killing fields,

spoke at West Chester University recently, offering what he called a

historian's view of the widespread conflict in southeast Asia.

More than 250 people attended to listen and ask questions, including critical

questions about the United States' role in the destruction of Cambodia, and

Dith Pran's take on the possible war with Iraq.

Dith Pran is a staff photographer for the New York Times.

Back in the 1970s, he was a contract photographer for the Times in Cambodia.

After the Khmer Rouge took over, he was captured and spent four years in a

Cambodian labor camp in the mid- to late 1970s. The experience was the basis

for the movie "The Killing Fields."

The hour and a half discussion concentrated on the history of the conflict,

which spread out of Vietnam when the Viet Cong used Cambodia to enter South

Vietnam.

Dith Pran defended the United States, which bombed Cambodia to rout the Viet

Cong. When it bombed his homeland, it unintentionally strengthened the

dormant Cambodian Communist organization, the Khmer Rouge, he said.

"As a survivor, you have to put yourself in everybody's shoes," Dith Pran

said.

The mixed role of the U.S. in the deaths in southeast Asia complicate efforts

to bring justice, he said. The goal is to find a way to bring to justice the

leaders of the Khmer Rouge. Its top leader, Pol Pot, died quietly in 1998.

"It's not easy. I can see that," he said. "I cannot get too angry. It doesn't

mean I don't care about justice."

"We're here to talk about how you prevent this from happening again," said

Dith Pran, who spoke at the university on Tuesday.

He pointed to the massacres in the former Yugoslavia and the current trial of

past president Slobodan Milosevic by the United Nations war crimes tribunal

as a sign that the world is doing a better job of addressing genocide.

Between 1.6 million and 1.7 million people died in Cambodia in the late

1970s. The United States had pulled its troops from Vietnam in 1975 and the

Khmer Rouge took power in Cambodia.

Dith Pran escaped to Thailand in 1979, and has worked as a news photographer

for the Times since 1980.

Several in the audience asked questions, including how to reconcile the

United States bombings in Cambodia that killed tens of thousands of people.

"They wanted to help Cambodia," Dith Pran answered to Josh Gessner, a

Delaware County Community College student. "It didn't work out that way."

A young woman wanted to know his position on the potential war with Iraq.

Dith Pran said it is a discussion that is important for this democratic

country's people to have, and that he does not have the answer.

"Is this true what our president says, or just a politic? I don't know," he

said.

"I'm not anti-war or pro-war, I'm just a realist," he said. "I go by the

majority."

But he warned that "history will blame you in the long run if say Saddam

becomes Hitler," Dith Pran said.

A couple of people wondered after the discussion about the "complications."

Dith Pran cited as the reason for the slowed efforts is to pursue justice in

the wake of the Cambodian massacres.

Lynn Crew, a former Media resident who lives in Sarasota, Fla., said: "If you

think that way, justice will never happen."

Her friend, West Chester University history department professor Richard

Erickson said that Dith Pran's position struck him as characteristically

Asian.

"Time is in perspective. Justice will come about when justice will come about

and that's OK," he said.

Chhut Pa, who said that the South Vietnamese liberated his country and saved

Pa and his family the day he was scheduled to die in 1979, said the Cambodian

government moves slowly, and that the country is insistent that it bring its

own to trial, rather than the United Nations' crimes tribunal.

Pa, 30, who now lives in Philadelphia, said that Dith Pran's argument that

justice is complicated is "a cop-out."

But he also admitted that justice is complicated. There are people in power

today in the now-democratic country that would be implicated, he said.

Renee Erickson, Richard Erickson's wife, offered her position on Dith Pran's

perspective: "Someone who has lived the life he has lived earns him the right

to have the philosophy he has."

After the discussion, Dith Pran reiterated that his goal is to be impartial,

something that he has learned through his years as a journalist, he said.

"I'm a historian. I don't take sides," he said.

Dith Pran has also compiled stories for "Children of Cambodia's Killing

Fields: Memoirs by Survivors," published in 1997.

He founded and is the president of The Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project

Inc.

The university's Asian American Association, office of co-curricular programs

and the holocaust/genocide Study Center sponsored Dith Pran.

©Daily Local News 2002