Protagonist of ‘Killing Fields’ Now a Citizen

Dith Pran, whose ordeal in the Khmer Rouge work camps of Cambodia inspired the film “The Killing Fields,” was sworn in today as a U.S. citizen, a move he says will help his mission of bringing peace to his native land.

“I’m glad I made it. My dream came true,” he said to the judges, immigration officials, news media and 336 other new citizens gathered in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn.

Dith then said a phrase in his native Khmer, which he translated as “Long live freedom.” The courtroom resounded with applause.

After Cambodia fell to the communist Khmer Rouge in 1975, Dith spent years in labor camps, slaving 14 hours a day for a spoonful of rice. Any knowledge of politics would have guaranteed death, so Dith pretended he had been a taxi driver before the war, instead of translator for then-New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg.

“I make myself a quiet man, like a Buddhist monk,” he said later.

Dith’s life was the basis of Schanberg’s article “The Death and Life of Dith Pran,” which was adapted into the Academy Award-winning movie “The Killing Fields.” The film ends with Dith’s escape to Thailand in 1979 and reunion with Schanberg.

Today, Dith, 42, works at the New York Times as a photographer and lives in a rambling Victorian house in Brooklyn. Two of his four children are in college, and his wife works at a bank.