DOUGLAS MARTIN “Dith Pran, ‘Killing Fields’ Photographer, Dies at 65” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/31/nyregion/31dith.html
映画『キリング・フィールド』のモデルともなったDith Pran氏が死去。上の記事から、彼が米国に渡るまでの人生の前半をコピーしておく；
彼は渡米後、NYTのカメラマンとして活動していたが、http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/03/31/nyregion/20080331_DITH_index.htmlでは、写真家としての彼の作品を数枚見ることができる。
Dith Pran was born on Sept. 23, 1942, in Siem Reap, Cambodia, a provincial town near the ancient temples at Angkor Wat. His father was a public-works official.Having learned French at school and taught himself English, Mr. Dith was hired as a translator for the United States Military Assistance Command. When Cambodia severed ties with the United States in 1965, he worked with a British film crew, then as a hotel receptionist.
In the early 1970s, as unrest in neighboring Vietnam spread and Cambodia slipped into civil war, the Khmer Rouge grew more formidable. Tourism ended. Mr. Dith interpreted for foreign journalists. When working for Mr. Schanberg, he taught himself to take pictures.
When the Khmer Rouge won control in 1975, Mr. Dith became part of a monstrous social experiment: the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of people from the cities and the suppression of the educated classes with the goal of recreating Cambodia as an agricultural nation.
To avoid summary execution, Mr. Dith hid that he was educated or that he knew Americans. He passed himself off as a taxi driver. He even threw away his money and dressed as a peasant.
Over the next 4 ½ years, he worked in the fields and at menial jobs. For sustenance, people ate insects and rats and even the exhumed corpses of the recently executed, he said.
In November 1978, Vietnam, by then a unified Communist nation after the end of the Vietnam War, invaded Cambodia and overthrew the Khmer Rouge. Mr. Dith went home to Siem Reap, where he learned that 50 members of his family had been killed; wells were filled with skulls and bones.
The Vietnamese made him village chief. But he fled when he feared that they had learned of his American ties. His 60-mile trek to the Thai border was fraught with danger. Two companions were killed by a land mine.
ところで、映画『キリング・フィールド』で彼の役を演じてオスカーの助演男優賞を獲った、自らもカンボディア難民であったHaing S. Ngorが1996年にLAでストリート・ギャングに殺されていたことを知る。
