As the Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Phnom Penh sheds light on horrors perpetrated by that regime thirty years ago, Dan Southerland recalls that reporters and photographers were also not spared.
Dith Pran, the hero of "The Killing Fields," was an interpreter and “fixer” in 1970. It was the first year of the war in Cambodia, a time when many Cambodians truly believed that they could defeat the Vietnamese Communists. At that time, the Khmer Rouge were just emerging as a military force that would ultimately conquer the country and send Dith Pran to a labor camp.