Dith worked alongside the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sydney Schanberg to relay the story of the Cambodian atrocities to the international news media at both of their perils. Schanberg credits Dith with saving his life when the pair were captured by the Khmer Rouge.
Dith suffered in a Cambodian labor camp run by the radical communist regime when the Khmer Rouge seized power there in 1975. He spent several years at the labor camp and lost more than 50 of his relatives to torture or starvation.
Schanberg remembers Dith as a journalist who was “always doing good deeds for people in the Buddhist tradition.” Dith escaped Cambodia to Thailand in 1979 where Schanberg flew to met him. He long advocated attention to the Cambodian genocides, compiling several stories and books on the subject while continuing his work with the Times. Dith was portrayed by Dr. Haing Ngor, himself a Cambodian survivor, in the portrayal of the atrocities, “The Killing Fields,” and won an Academy Award for his role.
The world has lost a tireless advocate and a hero.