Dith Pran

I've been busy and didn't have time to write about this. But Dith Pran died over the weekend. You can read the NY Times obituary here. I'm sure nearly all of you have seen the movie "The Killing Fields," so I'm not going to say much about Mr. Dith's life. Except to say this: Dith Pran was lucky. I don't mean to make light of the horrors he endured, he certainly had a very rough life. But his life had a happy, Hollywood-ready ending. Few people in Cambodia can say the same. Nearly everyone had a member of their nuclear family killed (as did Dith Pran), and everyone who wasn't a member of the Khmer Rouge spent time in a forced labor camp. But Dith Pran avoided the aftermath and escaped to America, where he lived a life most Cambodians can only dream of. He most certainly deserves credit for his unceasing effort to expose the subsequent genocides that have occurred around the world and to give a voice to the victims. We should all be grateful for his efforts. He was a great man, but he was still lucky.

Just so you understand, I'll tell the story of another lucky person named Phannak (I don't remember his family name). I met Phannak in Phnom Penh. He managed the hotel I stayed at and we spent a lot of time together. I've heard many stories from Cambodians about their experiences during the Khmer Rouge rule and subsequent Vietnamese occupation. They are all strikingly similar. But what makes Phannak's story so striking to me is that Phannak and I were both born in April of 1968. So when I was hearing his story, I was constantly comparing my life to his and thinking about how grateful I was to have lived my life instead of his. Phannak wasn't as lucky as Dith Pran, but he was luckier than most Cambodians.

Phannak grew up in a rural village west of Phnom Penh and the Khmer Rouge didn't reach his village for about six months after the takeover. His family was pretty well educated and owned books, which would surely result in their death. But they had advanced warning of the KR's arrival, so they burned their books, destroyed their identifications, and left their village. Two days later, the Khmer Rouge arrived at the village and killed everyone, including nearly all of Phannak's extended family. Phannak, his parents, and his brother managed to avoid the KR for six months, but they were eventually caught and taken to a holding facility. The next morning, Phannak awoke to find that his family was gone. So this seven year old child was forced to face the KR on his own. It was Khmer Rouge policy to separate all family members and take them to separate work camps. Phannak was the taken to a forced labor camp, where he spent the next 32 months of his life. Being a young child he was given fairly easy work. He guided water buffaloes to plow the rice fields. Luckily, his camp was one of the earliest to liberated by the Vietnamese army.

But the story doesn't end there. I had previously thought that the liberation must have been similar to what the victims of Auschwitz must have experienced, but that's not the case. The victims of Auschwitz must have been very happy to see the Americans arrive. And the Americans certainly treated those victims with the utmost care and empathy. But in Cambodia, the Vietnamese were long time enemies and seeing them arrive was hardly a cause for joy. And the Vietnamese did nothing to help them. All they did was open the gates and tell the Cambodians to leave. The Cambodians were so stunned that they didn't know what to do. They didn't know where to go and many stayed for days. When it became clear that the Vietnamese wouldn't give them any food, they left.

And they wandered, looking for their loved ones. When they reached a village, they would check the message boards and leave their own messages. There were two kinds of message boards. One kind was a list of everyone known to have been killed. If you knew someone was dead, you added their name to that board. The other kind was for the living. You listed who you were, what family members you were traveling with, what villages you'd been to, and where you were going to next. These message boards allowed people to reunite with their families. Phannak's job was relatively easy. He already knew that most of his relatives had been killed, and he was only looking for three people. It took about a year for Phannak, but he eventually found his remaining loved ones. He was lucky.

Phannak's family eventually returned to what was left of their village and built a new home. His parents educated him as best they could, and Phannak learned how to read and learned a little math as well. The Vietnamese occupiers made no effort to provide education, so Phannak was lucky his parents were still alive and educated. That made him a highly educated person by Cambodian standards. The Vietnamese occupation ended after eight years, and Phanak took his skills to Phnom Penh to look for work. He quickly learned English and worked as a translator for the NGO's that had come to help rebuild Cambodia. Eventually he got a job managing a hotel, the Indochine, in downtown Phnom Penh. He doesn't make much money, but what little he makes, he spends educating himself in computer technology. He hopes to someday buy a computer of his own. And someday, he hopes to marry and raise children that won't have to experience what he did. I can only wish him luck, but he has fortunately been lucky so far. And he's the first to admit it. When Phannak finished telling me his story, he added the haunting words that you hear so many times from these people: "and I was lucky." Given that 1/3 of the Cambodian population was killed by the Khmer Rouge, he really was lucky. It's hard for us to see it that way, but it's true.

Dith Pran is dead now, and we should all mourn him and be grateful for his admirable work. But Phannak lives on, and we should all be hopeful for the continued progress he and his countrymen are making. And we should never forget the horrors that happened to them. And we should be sad that such horrors continue to happen in Darfur and the Congo. And we should ask ourselves: Why do we let it go on? Not once in the history of mankind has a genocide been stopped, and that is something that really needs to change. Dith Pran tried. Now that he is dead, we all need to do more. Dith Pran would ask that of us, and so does Phannak. I offered Phannak money for his education, but he refused it. He asked that I help to ensure that others don't experience what he did. I only wish I knew how.