A Hundred Lotuses Blooming? - Hun Sen's Cambodia - page 193

sensitive stories into the mainstream press. “Back [in the 1990s] journalists were fighting
each other in their stories, but now there is solidarity,” he told me. “Even the progovern-
ment journalists and opposition journalists can sit at the same table and share stories.”
Cambodian readers have also become more sophisticated, more able to distinguish real
stories from party propaganda.
Though there is an increasing appetite for serious news, journalists still tread a fine line
in reporting on sensitive topics. According to one Khmer newspaper reporter, journalists
writing sensitive stories are put on a “blacklist” at the Ministry of Interior. From there
the threats escalate. Some reporters receive “warnings” from Hun Sen's cabinet. Others
receive calls from officials in the Council of Ministers—often ex-colleagues—who urge
them, in the guise of friendly advice, to “do the right thing.” Another tactic of choice is
the threatening text message or anonymous call. In a 2007 survey of 150 journalists, 54
percent said they had been threatened with physical harm or legal action in the course
of their work. 13 Occasionally the name of a recalcitrant journalist is even broadcast on
government-controlled television, where they are publicly labeled as “opposition,” alien-
ating them from friends and colleagues fearful of being tarred with the same brush.
Threats, as so often, come wrapped in inducements. In exchange for their acquies-
cence, reporters are often offered cash or jobs in the Press and Quick Reaction Unit, the
government's ever-expanding public relations department in the Council of Ministers. A
third of respondents to the survey cited above said they knew a colleague who took bribes
for not reporting stories, often to supplement paltry incomes or to ensure their family's
safety. 14 One Khmer journalist who reported on a land dispute between villagers and a
plantation firm owned by a leading tycoon recounted being summoned to his office after
a string of critical articles. When he entered, the businessman was sullen and impatient.
“He didn't say anything,” the reporter told me. “Then he just said, 'what kind of car do
you want?'”
For its own part, the Cambodian government has never admitted much of a distinction
between the opposition press, opposition political parties, and independent civil society
organizations. All are simply “opposition.” This isn't as far-fetched as it might seem.
Many Khmer-language opposition newspapers and local NGOs are openly anti-govern-
ment. Kem Sokha, the vice-president of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP)
and former head of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, is just one civil society vet-
eran with a long and undistinguished track record of bashing the Vietnamese and peddling
anti-Hanoi conspiracy theories. Some notable exceptions aside, few Cambodian activists
have put their necks out to denounce the use of racist anti-Vietnamese rhetoric by op-
position politicians or defend the human rights of ethnic Vietnamese living in Cambodia.
Many equate fighting oppression with simply fighting the CPP. As with Sam Rainsy, the