Cambodia, 1974, photo by Dith Pran. Dith Pran/New York Times.
If you haven’t see the film “The Killing Fields” since it came out in the eighties, perhaps now would be an appropriate time. Dith Pran, the photojournalist and war prisoner who’s story is told by the film has passed away March 31st from cancer just as the Cambodian War Crime Tribunal gears up for a heart wrenching search for truth and justice. 5 top war criminals are being tried in the Khmer Rouge “Year Zero” genocide were an estimated 1.7 million people were killed.
After watching the DVD with bonus material I learned about the rather ironic death of Haing S. Ngor, the actor who played Dith Pran in “The Killing Fields”. Haing S. Ngor, who was a prisoner of war himself and found it difficult to reenact some of the scenes, eventually made a new life for himself in the US but in 1996 was shot to death in an attempted robbery. He escaped the grasp of the Khamer Rouge only to die in a country who still believes that we should be allowed to bear arms.
Sydney H. Schanberg, his partner is still alive.
New York Times article has many more photos of and by Dith Pran and a very recent interview at his bedside. “Dith Pran, Photojournalist and Survivor of the Killing Fields, Dies at 65″ by Douglas Martin, March 21, 2008
- – - – - – - -
Upsetting fact of living in the U.S.A.: If you attend a college in Utah you can now carry a concealed weapon, with the proper license of course. In 2006 Utah Supreme court allowed guns on college campuses. The opinion is guns in the hands of law abiding citizens can save lives. The CNN report Right to Bear Arms on Campus?
3 Comments
Yes, if only we could make guns illegal there would be no more killing. I’m sure it would be every bit as effective as the war on drugs.
Divine goodness can only be achieved through proper government intervention, eh? How effective would the Khamer Rouge have been if the people had been armed? How effective would Hitler have been if the people hadn’t been disarmed? Who knows, but lopsided power, in any form, has always been the route to tyranny, and no organizations in the history of the world have been more tyrannical and devastating to the people than governments. Believing that you are safe is not the same as being safe, and no safety is absolute. The possibility of being shot as a result of breaking and entering or robbing someone puts pause in the hearts of those would commit those actions. Nothing is more of an open invitation to the committing of crime than knowing there is a reduced probability of bodily harm.
Rest assured that being the lamb will not result in inheriting the earth, rather it will make you suitable for slaughter.
All of historie’s greatest dictators/mass murderers began their destruction with the disarming of the populous. The anti-gun supporter only sees the deaths of innocent victims, I on the other hand, also see the lives saved by firearms. As for removal of firearms from everyone…what else? Cutlery, vehicles, baseball bats, bricks? All regularly used as implements of death…
Post a Comment