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Freedom of press country by country. Some maps vary, for example, one shows
Canada as on par with Sweden, while another shows Burma as being on par
with Thailand. |
There is no doubt that Cambodia does not boast the same freedom of speech laws that I, living in the United States, can benefit from. I can write critically about Barack Obama and ObamaCare, and not worry that someone will come after me for doing so. This, needless to say, is not the case in Cambodia. Cambodian journalists live in constant fear of saying or writing something wrong, especially because much of the media in Cambodia are owned by Hun Sen's ruling party, the Cambodian People's Party (CPP). In fact, "spreading false information or insulting public officials," is cause for imprisonment (Cambodia Profile). It is important to note, however, that those media do not wholly include the internet, seeing as only a reported 663,000 Cambodian had access (even if inconsistent) to the internet in June 2012 (Cambodia Profile). This is not to say that government defamation on the internet is free game, but that the internet is not a widely used tool in Cambodia as of late. That being said, the BBC reports a 2012 decree banning any internet cafes from opening up near schools, and that committing crimes that might threaten national security or tradition on the internet is forbidden. The fear behind any freedom of speech spreads beyond journalists and into other activism sectors of Cambodian society.
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The pro-government daily Koh Santepheap newspaper
homepage screenshot. |
The most famous recent case of an imprisoned Khmer journalist is Mam Sonado, a land rights activist, the president of a pro-democracy movement, and radio host on of the only station that criticized Hun Sen's government. He was charged for supposedly starting a rebellion and accused specifically of instigating villagers in Kratie, Cambodia, to form their own state independent of Cambodia--an accusation that Sonado denies. Although there were clashes between the government and Kratie villagers due to the government taking away their land, Sonado was not involved (Cambodia Jails Journalist Mam Sonando over 'Plot.'). The protests in Kratie escalated because the police
shot and killed a fifteen-year-old girl protesting. From what I have read and seen about Cambodia, this is not an uncommon occurrence. Sonado was sentenced to twenty years in prison, something that human rights groups call outrageous, yet as he left the court, he told press: "I am happy that I have helped the nation" (Cambodia Jails Journalist Mam Sonando over 'Plot.'). In March, however,
he was released after indirect pressure from the United Nations. But not all of the journalists and activists in Cambodia have the U.N. at their side.
In September 2012, an environmental activist and journalist named Hang Serei Oudom was brutally killed (at the mercy of axe blows to his head) and found in the trunk of his car by police (Gleensdale). Oudom was known to write stories about the illegal logging of Cambodian timber for luxury corporations--stories the the government would prefer that people do not know about. Western journalists are not exempt to the government's watchful eye either. There have been reports of harassment at English language newspapers, and in 1997, a
Khmer-Canadian photographer was killed. A
Canadian journalist was with Oudom when we was brutally killed as well; however, she was spared.
Bradley Cox's film
Who Killed Chea Vichea? discusses the human rights abuses in Cambodia in relation to the injustice of Chea Vichea's murder and trial. Vichea, Cambodia's former Free Trade Union president, was assassinated in 2004 on Chinese New Year in broad daylight. Six months before he received a text message that he would be killed, but he persevered in his political and activist work. Vichea protected garment workers and promoted strikes and demonstrations to increase minimum wage and improve worker conditions. Today, the U.S. receives $2 billion in garments from Cambodia, while the 250,000 Cambodians working in the garment industry make $0.28 an hour on average, leading to a $45 monthly salary. The 250,000 Cambodians working in the industry support an estimated 750,000 other Cambodians, meaning that the garment industry in Cambodia buttresses one million people (7% of the population). Sam Rainsy, the politician in stark opposition to Hun Sen and the CPP, supported Vichea and human rights (although, Joel Brinkley's book
Cambodia's Curse is more critical of Rainsy than the film). The CPP today have a lock on power and control basically everything about the police, military, and public expenditure (or rather, lack there of).
After Vichea's death, nobody was arrested. The government did not do anything. In fact, Hun Sen was astonished that people wanted him to resign because when 9/11 happened in the United States, George Bush was not immediately ousted (of course, the contexts were completely different as only a few people believe Bush was at fault for the attacks--which he was
not. This only proves Hun Sen's madness). Human rights groups and international donors--the latter on which Cambodia relies heavily--pressed for justice in the Vichea case. The police then released a drawing of the man they said the one witness, a Phnom Penh shopkeeper named Va Sothy, described as the murderer (after seeking asylum in Thailand and then the U.S., Sothy denies ever speaking to the police). 48 hours later, the police had arrested two men, Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeun, arrested. But these men did not commit the murder, and as Rainsy said, the government just "had to arrest somebody for the show."
A few days before Vichea's murder, Samnang's mother brought a photo of Samnang to the police station to claim she was disowning him because he owed some money to a pharmaceutical company, and she did not want her house taken from her to repay her son's debt. Oeun had a one-time-business-partner Din Doeun who reported him for stealing money, around the same time Vichea was killed as well. Thus, both of the names and photo were easy for the Cambodian police to use to arrest
somebody. The head police said they admitted to the crime and were guilty; however, footage shows both men crying, screaming "Let the earth swallow me whole," "Shoot me in the mouth and let me die if I did it," and about the Cambodian police, "They can make white black." Later, former police officials admitted that there were two undercover police on the scene directly after the murder acting as journalists, and the police were not strict about protecting potential forensic evidence from the public.
Watching these men crying in unfathomable amounts of distress was inexplicably heart-wrenching. They were arrested without proof. Although he said that he was threatened and coerced into it, Samnang signed a confession saying he was guilty. Samnang actually had dozens of alibis that he was in a village, Neak Long, forty kilometers outside of Phnom Penh. Oeun maintained his innocence, and friends at the Chinese New Year party he claimed to be attending would not come forward with any alibi information unless they were allowed to leave the country, because "in Cambodia, if you know things, you can die." At court when both Samnang and Oeun were sentenced to twenty years in prison, they screamed and cried when leaving, asking, for the "King Father" (the late King Sihanouk) or "international guests" to do something becuase "this is injustice." Relatives and friends screamed as the police van took the two away--that they should be given poison so they can kill themselves, and one of the mothers asked for the police to just let her son "die tomorrow." Human rights groups insisted that the wrong men had been convicted. In Cambodia, only the police and military have guns, meaning it was the police or military, controlled by the government, that killed Vichea.
According to an old police officer living France, Cambodia's police force is "as powerful as God." They are also known to
torture prisoners, similar to S-21 and the political prisoners of the Khmer Rouge. In fact, one officer (filmed privately through a wall) said that feeding corpses to crocodiles was a common practice. Indeed: "A Cambodian's life is worth the same as a chicken's...a French dog is worth more."A former judge told Cox that not only are many judges not properly educated in the legal systems (part of the Khmer Rouge's educational legacy), but also that "there isn't a single judge who is innocent" from the CPP.
On the part of the elite, there is no want to change the current Hun Sen dominated system--while many activist groups believe there might be. The CPP and its high ranking members can do whatever they want, including quash any opposition. Before the 2003 elections, there were a lot of high profile killings: a judge, a politically active monk, and an opposition advisor. Shortly after the highly contested elections (that were not resolved for nearly a year), a journalist was killed. And then Vichea. According to Rainsy, the government "will kill any secondary target." The message: accept Hun Sen or die.
Vichea's brother in part of the film castigates the U.S. and U.K. governments for not caring about human rights abuses, and in fact claiming that human rights in Cambodia have
improved. But at the end of the day, as one of the international workers put it: The U.S. just does not care enough, and they have more important things attending to their interests than a small country. It does not bother them that they ravished the country in the 1970s leading Cambodia to disarray, genocide, and injustice (and a
host of other problems).
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Samnang (left) and Oeun at their appeals trial on
November 7, 2012. |
At the end, the filmmakers tell where the main players are today. In fact, some of the policemen involved in the case have died (Hok Lundy in 2008 in a "mysterious" helicopter fire) or are in prison themselves (such as Heng Pov, once Hun Sen's "right hand man" is a victim of "political infighting"). Both Oeun and Samnang were provisionally released on December 31, 2008, but then on December 27, 2012 were
re-sentenced even
after King Sihanouk said they were innocent, and Heng Pov said so also. It is a widely held belief that Samnang and Oeun are the unfortunate scapegoats. No one knows for sure who killed Chea Vichea, but the killing is almost certainly (although I will not say 100% in a legal case as such) connected to Hun Sen.
And what about the activists who did not attract this much media attention?
Works Cited:
"Cambodia Jails Journalist Mam Sonando over 'Plot.'"
BBC. 1 Oct. 2012. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19783123
"Cambodia Profile."
BBC. 21 Feb. 2013. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13006543 Web.
Gleensdale, Roy. "Cambodian Journalist Murdered."
The Guardian. 12 Sept. 2012. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2012/sep/12/journalist-safety-cambodia Web.
Who Killed Chea Vichea? Cox, Bradley Dir. Independent Television Service, 2010. Film.
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