The Last Word: Dith Pran
I was sad to learn that Dith Pran passed away today. Pran dedicated his life to educating the world about the “killing fields” a term he used to describe the grotesque heaps of human skeletal remains he witnessed along his 40-mile escape out of Cambodia in the late 70s. Pran travelled to Cambodia with NYT reporter Sydney Schanberg as a translator to cover the fall of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rogue, a radical communist group who’s approach to its people was —“To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss.” Horrific. When Pran tried to leave the country, he was detained, imprisoned and tortured nearly to death for four years before eventually escaping. And he was lucky to escape, nearly two million people died during the Khmer Rouge regime. Once free, Pran served as the voice for millions of Cambodians and became an active human rights ambassador and a photojournalist with one goal in mind—educate and motivate people to take action against killing fields around the world.
Pran was a guest lecturer at my university a few years ago and I remember being in such awe as he told his story. If you haven’t seen the movie, The Killing Fields, you really ought to. It’s films like this that I hope empower people to learn more and perhaps make a difference. I’ve been thinking about the idea of empowerment more and more lately, particularly what it takes to really transform someone’s perspective, ignite debate and make change. So much info is out there yet it’s still really hard to turn on the “why should I care” portion of our brain for longer than 24 hours after an interesting lecture or following a screening of an issue-based film. We take in the story, maybe have a conversation about it and then on to the next thing. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I’d like to see more call-to-action. Artists today have an incredible opportunity to empower their audience and enact change and I’d like to see more of it.
