The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Sydney Schanberg, passed away on Saturday in Poughkeepsie, New York, having suffered a heart attack a few days earlier.
A foreign correspondent for the New York Times, Mr Schanberg won international acclaim for his reporting of the Khmer Rouge insurgency and subsequent genocide, along with his Cambodian assistant, Dith Pran.
In 1975, as the American-backed government crumbled at the end of a five-year civil war, Mr Schanberg and Mr Dith refused to flee from the approaching Khmer Rouge, going against the pleas of their editors in New York. They were amongst just a handful of journalists who remained in the capital, Phnom Penh.
Mr Schanberg was therefore present at the beginning of the Cambodian genocide. Millions of people were forced to leave the cities, with Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot attempting a hideous social experiment by forcibly attempting to convert the entire country into his vision of a farming paradise.
