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”.
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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”.
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