For 30 years Aun Pheap reported on corruption, human rights abuses, elections and political scandals for every major newspaper in Cambodia, a job he felt he was born to do. Now, like so many journalists who worked in Cambodia’s once free press, he is in exile, branded an enemy of the state.
For Pheap, formerly a reporter at the Cambodia Daily, which shut down last year, “this is the worst situation for the press and for journalists I have seen in my whole 30-year career”. And it has worsened further this week, with the sale of the Phnom Penh Post, seen as the last bastion of the free press in Cambodia, to the owner of a Malaysian PR company who has links to the regime of the Cambodian prime minister, Hun Sen.
The development was described by Phil Robertson, the deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, as “a staggering blow to press freedom in Cambodia”.
In less than a year, Cambodia has gone from having the freest press in the region to being one of the most repressive and dangerous places to be a journalist. In the 2018 Reporters Without Borders press freedom indexpublished last month, Cambodia dropped 10 places from 132 to 142, and the country’s independent press was described as being “in ruins”. This was echoed by the Cambodian Centre for Independent Media, which recently concluded that the “facade” of free press in Cambodia had collapsed entirely, with almost half of journalists reporting intimidation.
Hun Sen’s all-out war on the independent media began in early 2017, as journalists found themselves followed and harassed by secret police and controversial commentators were arrested. Then, in September, the Cambodia Daily – which had been accused of a pro-opposition stance – was forced to close over a disputed $6.3m (£4.6m) tax bill.
This was swiftly followed by the shutting down of the Phnom Penh office of Radio Free Asia (RFA), which produced some of the most popularly consumed reporting on human rights violations and illegal government activity. Overall, 32 radio station across 20 provinces that broadcast reports critical of the government were forced to close last year.
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