Sunday, May 1, 2011

The Last Word: The New York Times

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2008/03/19/obituaries/1194817114251/last-word-dith-pran.html?scp=8&sq=cambodian%20genocide&st=cse
          This video is of Dith Pran and Sydney Schanberg telling the story of their experience in Cambodia.  Pran discussed what it was like to be a laborer in the work camps that Khmer Rouge made.  I had a hard time comprehending the awful things this man has been through, and watching him talk about it seemed almost unbelievable.  At one point, Pran talked about how he had written a book call “Children of Cambodia’s Killing Fields”, and how the children were forced by the Khmer Rouge to become soldiers, spies, and executioners.  What happened to these children is almost more horrible than what happens to their victims.  Soldiers twisted young minds to do the unthinkable, the most horrible things in the world.  To also hear, firsthand, what Pran’s experiences were with the Khmer Rouge was very interesting and upsetting.  His stories of what they did to him, how he had to hide his education because they would kill him for it, well, it’s hard to get your mind wrapped around.  I would have liked to hear more about how he survived the Khmer Rouge and less about the movie, “The Killing Fields”.  Even though it was interesting to see some of the scenes that he lived through portrayed, I didn’t really believe it was necessary because what they did show was never something that was too significant.  Overall, I found the video to be very informative and interesting, and to hear this horrific story from both Schanberg and Pran was unimaginable.  

1 comment:

  1. for the part that you mentioned in this passage that the soldiers forced the children to kill people, it really startled me and astonished me, i mean, they are children!the future of the world. children deserve a happy childhood, where no killing is done, not mention that the killings are forced to done by themselves. what nightmare would that be for them. and the children who knew basically nothing about the world, about the army, about the politics, about the things that they were told to do and forced to do, that would be the whole world to them since they are children and are new to the world unfamiliar to the world, they were strangers to the world, and the killing thing would be their whole normal life, the killing thing would be normal to them. how could they let something so awful as forcing the children to kill happens?

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