Dith Pran & Haing Ngor
At Oscar Night 1985

Even death couldn't silence their voices

By Peter Michelmore

DITH PRAN stood quietly in the Los Angeles funeral chapel, studying the face in the casket. He was heartbroken that his friend Haing Ngor had been murdered-shot to death outside his home. During their harrowing years in Cambodia, they'd both looked into the eyes of killers many, many times, but they'd always survived. In the chapel that Friday, March 8, 1996, Dith noticed images from the 1984 Academy Award-winning film, The Killing Fields, flickering on a nearby TV. One scene showed a barefoot man in ragged clothes, hoeing in a Cambodian rice field in the pouring rain. On his face was a look of infinite suffering. The actor was Haing Ngor, and he was playing the role of Dith Pran, which was part of what made the two men one. Inside, they were basically the same person, twin symbols of a haunted country. Dith felt a choking sensation in his chest. The two friends had dreamed of sharing a big moment together-the day of reckoning for the evildoers in Cambodia. Alone now, Dith knew he must go on with their mission. He had to do it for Haing Ngor and himself, for their family members and friends who'd perished, and for Cambodia. Dith Pran and Haing Ngor didn't know each other on the fateful day - April 17, 1975-that set the course of their lives. They were both in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh when swarms of Khmer Rouge communist guerrillas seized control from the U S.-supported government troops of President Lon Nol. A shadow of fear fell across the capital as teen-age guerrillas drove all city dwellers "traitors to the revolution"-from their homes and forced them into the countryside. The leader of the revolution was a Maoist called Pol Pot. At midmorning Haing Ngor, then 34, an obstetrician and surgeon, was performing an abdominal operation at the military hospital. Suddenly a guerrilla burst through the door, followed by a boy soldier who leveled a rifle at Ngor's temple. "You the doctor?" the boy snapped. "No, the doctor left a minute ago," Ngor said calmly. "You just missed him."

"Liar" the soldier screamed. "If I don't find the doctor, I'll come back and kill you" Immediately after the guerrillas left, Ngor and the others escaped. AT THAT SAME HOUR Dith Pran, 32, was at another hospital, working as an assistant for New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg. With Dith and two other Western newsmen, Schanberg left the hospital, and the four were in their car when someone cried out: "Americans! Take them!" In the next instant, guerrillas put guns to their heads. "They are French journalists!" Dith shouted. "'They are here to write about your great victory!" For over an hour, talking nonstop, he persuaded the guerrillas to release them and then later rushed the newsmen to the French embassy, the single sanctuary for Westerners trapped in the city. Dith hoped to be expelled from the country with the others. However, the Khmer Rouge ordered all Cambodians out of the compound. On April 20 Dith headed toward his hometown of Siem Reap. Two million people were on the move. Dith knew if his American connection was revealed, he'd be shot. He slipped through Khmer Rouge checkpoints by claiming to be a taxi driver. "I'm from the lower class,' he'd say. His one consolation was that his wife, Ser Moeun, and their four children had been evacuated with the American embassy staff.

HAING NGOR went to search for his fiancee, Chang My Huoy. Not until the end of the month, however, did he find her. They were assigned to work in a rock quarry near Ngor's home village of Samrong Yong. Later they joined a crew planting rice. When asked his occupation, Ngor gave the same response as Dith: "Taxi driver." From sunup to past dark, Ngor and Huoy hoed rice fields, built earthworks for irrigation and repaired roads. The food ration was two small bowls of rice gruel a day. Ngor and Huoy also ate lizards, field mice and red ants. At one point, weakened by dysentery, Ngor shrank to 70 pounds. He told Huoy he was nearing the end. "If you die, I die," she said. Then the Khmer Rouge unexpectedly distributed yams-one for each family. Huoy, herself gaunt with hunger, cooked the precious starchy root and spoon-fed every morsel to Ngor. Gradually he struggled back. AT ANOTHER LABOR CAMP, Dith worked as a cook for blacksmiths. He watched them melt down automobiles to make simple buckets. The philosophy of Angka-the Khmer Rouge word for the leadership of Cambodia's Communist Party-was to return the country to a primitive past. All towns and cities were emptied. All hospitals and schools were closed. Now there were no markets, no money. "Angka is taking us back to year zero," the camp cadre announced. One night, desperate for food, Dith crept into the rice field and was filling his pockets when a shout exploded behind him. "Thief!' Six soldiers, three of them teenage girls, began beating Dith with the butt-ends of bamboo machetes. "You steal from Angka, you die!" one guard yelled. After a night on his knees, his arms and legs bound tightly, Dith was forced to vow never again to offend Angka. As Dith spoke the pledge, he silently prayed to Buddha, If you allow me to survive, I will tell the world what the Khmer Rouge have done. IN HAING NGOR'S LAMP CAMP, two young boys turned him in after seeing him hide arrowroot that he'd foraged in the jungle. One guard tied Ngor to a mango tree while another demanded his previous occupation. "Taxi driver," Ngor answered. "You are lying" the guard yelled. He picked up a hatchet and chopped off half of Ngor's little finger. Ngor was still tied to the tree when guards brought over a pregnant woman. Without warning, one of the guards disemboweled her and tore out the fetus. Ngor, numb with horror, was later released. But his agonies weren't over. Now a man who knew Ngor told the Khmer Rouge that he was a doctor. Despite his denials, Ngor was hoisted onto a gallows. Under his dangling feet, guards set fire to a pile of rice husks and lumber. Legs blistering, Ngor hung in the smoke and flames for four days without water. At this point. he'd almost have welcomed death. But if he admitted to being a doctor, Huoy would be shot for not exposing him. Finally the guards cut him down. Toward the end of 1977, Huoy became pregnant and at seven months went into labor. Ngor quickly saw that she needed a Cesarean section. But he had no instruments, no antibiotics. Finally, cradling her in his arms, Ngor felt her heartbeat become fainter and fainter. Then his beloved Huoy uttered her last words, "Take care of yourself, Sweet." Shortly after Huoy's death, an official's spouse ransacked Ngor's hut and stole an old ID card that had a picture of Huoy attached. Risking his life, Ngor pleaded with a local official to return his only personal treasure. Finding the card, the official ripped off the picture and handed it to him. IN THP SAME STRUGGLE for survival, Dith Pran became a village chief's houseboy. The chief had a rare possession: a radio. Tuning to a Voice of America broadcast one night, Dith learned that Hanoi was attacking eastern Cambodia in retaliation for Khmer Rouge raids on Vietnam. After a massive invasion in December 1978, Vietnamese tanks rolled into Phnom Penh, and Pol Pot and his aides fled to Thailand. In the wake of the battle, Dith trekked cast to Siem Reap, his hometown. He found only his enfeebled mother and one sister alive. His father had starved to death in 1975. The Khmer Rouge had executed Dith's three brothers; his other sister was murdered with her husband and two children. When Dith asked about their bodies, a woman told him, "Come, I'll show you the killing fields." Walking into a bushy area outside town, Dith felt his whole body quivering. Across the wide field, skulls and other bones poked through a thin cover of earth. Are my brothers here? Dith wondered in anguish. My sister? IN HAING NGOR'S REGION, the Vietnamese arrived in March 1979. Soon Ngor headed for Thailand, creeping along jungle trails seeded with land mines. In May he crossed to a Thai refugee camp. Behind Ngor, strewn through Khmer Rouge killing fields, were the bones of his parents, three brothers and three sisters. Of a total population of 7.9 million in 1975, roughly 1.7 million Cambodians perished under Pol Pot. Resting by a river near the Thai camp, Ngor thought, Someday I will tell the world what has happened. DITH PRAN also struggled through minefields to reach Thailand. In New York City, when Sydney Schanberg received word of Dith's survival, the journalist took the first flight to Bangkok. After relating the horror of life under the Khmer Rouge, Dith stared hard at his friend and said what Schanberg already knew: "You must write it, Sydney." chanberg wrote the wrenching story of Dith's experiences for the New York Times Magazine in January 1980. It was aptly titled "The Death and Life of Dith Pran." Reunited with his wife, Ser Moeun, and his four children, Dith moved to Brooklyn and became a Times photographer. Soon he began public appeals for an international tribunal to bring Khmer Rouge leaders to justice. "As a survivor," he told a group of students and teachers in Little Rock, Ark., "I must speak out." IN AUGUST 1980, after repeated efforts, Ngor finally traveled to the United States. Around his neck, he wore a gold locket. Inside, printed on a heart-shaped piece of porcelain, was a picture of Huoy that he'd had copied from the ID photo. Settling in Los Angeles, Ngor became a counselor for the Chinatown Service Center, finding work for refugees. Then in early 1982, word spread through the community about a Hollywood movie to be made about the Khmer Rouge reign of terror. Friends urged Ngor to audition. "I'm a doctor," he said, "not an actor." In a twist of fate, however, the woman casting the movie was at a Cambodian wedding that Ngor attended, and during the reception she snapped his picture. Afterward he began thinking about appearing in the film. Talking with Americans, he was surprised how few knew of the ruin of Cambodia. A true-to-life movie he thought, would open their eyes. After auditioning, Ngor signed an acting contract for $1000 a week. The movie, The Killing Fields, was adapted from Schanberg's article. Reading the script for the first time, Ngor was transfixed. I AM Dith Pran! he thought. Director Roland Joffe felt the same way, casting him opposite Sam Waterston, who played Schanberg. The movie remained in production for nearly two years. During that time Ngor worked with an intensity that often left him distraught. To his mind, fate had chosen him to expose the evil of the Khmer Rouge. At the movie's premiere in New York City in January 1985, Ngor was invited to meet Dith Pran. When he first saw Dith, Ngor let out a whoop and brought his palms together in traditional Cambodian greeting. Eyesshining, the two men embraced. "You are me, and I am you," Ngor said. Later Dith told Ngor, "Thank you. You have given my mission a strong voice. People will listen now." "It is our mission," Ngor replied.In March 1985 Ngor won an Academy Award for best supporting actor, and suddenly he had an audience of millions for his message. In his acceptance speech, he thanked Warner Bros. for helping him "let the world know what happened in my country." Finally, when Vietnam agreed to pull its troops out of Cambodia by September 1989, Dith told Ngor, "If we want to see home again, we should go before the Khmer Rouge shoot their way back into power." Over the next four years, Dith and Ngor visited Cambodia several times. In the spring of 1994, thanks partly to their efforts, the U.S. Congress acknowledged the mounting concern over the Khmer Rouge's escape from justice by passing the Cambodian Genocide Justice Act. As a result, the U.S. State Department provided a $500,000 grant to Yale University to catalogue the atrocities, identify perpetrators and explore means for bringing them to trial. Dith acted as an unpaid adviser to Yale's Cambodian Genocide Project. Ngor, meanwhile, worked with the project's documentation center in Phnom Penh. Even today, project workers are uncovering masses of files that point to Pol Pot's "bureaucracy of death." Moreover, Yale won a commitment from the Cambodian government to endorse initiatives that would bring the evidence - and Khmer Rouge leaders - to a criminal trial. NOW IN THE FUNERAL CHAPEL in Los Angeles, Dith thought back to the way everything suddenly ended for Haing Ngor. A few days after his latest trip to Cambodia, Ngor was driving home following a dinner on February 25, 1996, and as he parked, a gunman shot him in the leg and chest. Ngor died instantly. When police checked his belongings, they found $3000 untouched in a wallet in his coat pocket. Missing was his watch - and the gold locket of his wife. Friends asked if Dith suspected the Khmer Rouge. "I don't feel the chills in my body that tell me it was Khmer Rouge," he said. His instincts seemed correct. Later, police charged three teen-age Asian gang members with the murder. During the funeral, Dith talked of his gratitude to Ngor for helping him tell the world of Cambodia's suffering. Then, in a voice hushed with grief, he added, "He was my brother. I will miss him forever." From their jungle hide-outs Khmer Rouge forces still terrorize Cambodia's northwest provinces. Pol Pot, 69, lives on the Thai-Cambodian border, plotting a return to power. This month Yale University Press is publishing "Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors," a book compiled by Dith and edited by his current wife, Kim DePaul. Dith Pran continues working with the Cambodian Genocide Project, confident that justice will finally be done.

| | Dith Pran