'Killing Fields' photojournalist to speak in Trabant Center

New York Times photojournalist Dith Pran, whose wartime experience in Cambodia was portrayed in the award-winning movie The Killing Fields, will present a lecture on "Cambodia's Killing Field: Memoirs of a Survivor" at 7 p.m., Tuesday, April 9, in the Trabant University Center Theatre.

Pran was born in the picturesque region of Angkor Wat and worked in the tourist business until the war in Vietnam spilled over into Cambodia. He then found work as a war correspondent.

In 1975, Pran and Sydney Schanberg. a correspondendt for The New York Times, were trapped in Phnom Penh after the fall of the Cambodian capital to the communist Khmer Rouge. They were arrested by the Khmer Rouge and, along with two other journalists, held for execution.

Pran saved their lives by convincing Khmer Rouge officials that the three Westerners were neutral French journalists. The four found refuge in the French embassy until foreigners were asked to turn in their passports and Cambodians were ordered to leave.

Pran was exiled to the forced labor camps or "killing fields" in the Cambodian countryside, where he endured four years of starvation and torture before escaping to Thailand in October 1979. Many of Pran's family members did not escape the cruelty of the Khmer Rouge, however, and more than 50 of his relatives perished in the Cambodian holocaust.

Since his escape, Pran has worked to alert the world to the ongoing troubles in his home country. A recipient of the 1998 Ellis Island Medal of Honor, Pran has testified several times before the Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs of the Senate and House of Representatives regarding the Cambodian situation.

He holds four honorary doctorates and has been a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations.

He also is the founder and president of the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project Inc.

"I speak for those who did not survive and for those who still suffer.... Like one of my heroes, Elie Wiesel, who alerts the world to the horrors of the Jewish holocaust, I try to awaken the world to the holocaust of Cambodia, for all tragedies have universal implication," Pran said. "Part of my life is saving life. I don't consider myself a politician or a hero. I'm a messenger."

This free, public lecture is sponsored by the Office of Multicultural Programs. For more information, call 831-2991.