Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
as a mirage for the benefit of well-intentioned foreigners and donor governments. While
Cambodia remains freer than many other Asian countries, the outcome is a purposefully
selective freedom—a system that Thun Saray, the head of ADHOC and a leading Cam-
bodian activist, describes with some resignation as “open, but closed.” Indeed, few coun-
tries have seen such a wide gap between norms and realities.
Early in the morning on April 10, 2008, Lem Piseth was sitting up in bed watching televi-
sion when his nine-year-old son ran into the house yelling. While sweeping out the yard
of the family home in Battambang, Piseth's daughter Keokanitha had come across some
strange metal objects. She called her brother, who immediately recognized them as bul-
lets from a gun. Piseth, a reporter for Radio Free Asia (RFA), followed his children out-
side and there they were: half a dozen AK-47 rounds—gold, sleek, rocket-shaped—lying
scattered in the dirt. He knew the discovery was no accident. For over a year, Piseth had
been receiving threatening text messages and phone calls. All referred to reports he had
filed for the US-funded RFA. The previous year, after a series of reports on illegal log-
ging in Prey Lang forest, Piseth had received a call from a number he didn't recognize.
When he replied a man's voice said:
“Is that you Lem Piseth?”
“Yes. Who are you?”
“You are insolent. Do you want to die?”
“Why are you insulting me like this?”
“Because of the story about the forest and know this, there will not be enough land to
bury you in.”
6
After seeing the AK-47 bullets Piseth rang one of his government sources, who told
him powerful people were angry with his reporting. “I admit that I lost all courage as a
strong reporter,” he told me later. “The police and the government could not protect me
from the threat, and they seemed not to care.” Packing up his family, Piseth fled to Thai-
land and was later granted asylum in Norway.
On July 11—just weeks out from the 2008 national election—Khim Sambo, an editor
of the SRP-aligned
Moneakseka Khmer
newspaper, was gunned down along with his son
in Phnom Penh. He too had written about corruption involving senior officials. Sambo's
killer, like those responsible for the death of ten other Cambodian journalists since 1993,
was never found; nor was there much of a search.
On the surface, Cambodia's media seems free enough. Prepublication censorship is
rare. Colorful publications crowd the newsstands. The English-language
Phnom Penh
Post
and
Cambodia Daily
publish hard-hitting reports on government corruption and
rights abuses with little fear of reprisal. But most of the Khmer-language media is kept
on a tight leash. It's important to realize that an impartial press has never really exis-
