🇰🇭 Voice(less) of Democracy

Hello friends!

Before we crack into Phnom Penh today — here’s episode two of the Buku podcast. 

If it’s not clear from these 20 minutes of listening, I’m in love with Brown is Redacted and I want to share that love! For my second-ever book giveaway, I’m offering three ebook copies, one each for paid subscribers, free readers and a young Singaporean subscriber either free/paid. Just fill in this little form here, let me run it through the randomiser and I’ll announce winners next Wednesday. 

Thank you so much to Mysara for her generous time (and for being a good sport as I tried to work out terrible hotel wifi). It was a fantastic chat and I learnt a lot not just about the anthology and race in Singapore, but also about stage productions as activism and finding the Venn diagram crossovers within diverse communities. Loved it! 

Now, for some less great news. I’m still very naive, I think, and I was stunned on Sunday night as tweets about the imminent closure of Voice of Democracy, better known as VOD, hit the timeline. This seems to be not totally resolved yet, and I hope we get some sort of miracle that keeps the publication operating. For now, here is what I’ve been reading with my jaw on the floor. 

Thanks!Erin Cook 

Hun Sen ordered the closing of the publication Sunday night citing an article that said Hun Manet, son and appointed successor, had signed off on a $100,000 donation to Turkey’s earthquake relief efforts. Only the prime minister has the authority to sign off on such decisions. Despite previously giving VOD 72 hours to rectify the error and the publication offering a handwritten apology, by Monday morning the outlet’s English and Khmer language sites were no longer accessible via many Cambodian ISPs. 

“Commentators tried to attack me and my son Hun Manet,” Hun Sen wrote in a Facebook post announcing the decision, adding that VOD harmed the “dignity and reputation” of the government. That the story quoted government spokesperson Phay Siphan as its source doesn’t appear to matter. 

It’s the third major attack on press freedoms in the country since this newsletter began. First, the shuttering of Cambodia Daily after an absurd tax bill in 2017 and then the sell-off of Phnom Penh Post to pro-government forces essentially defanged reporting there a year later.  

Journalist (and one of my fave Twitter users) Mech Dara has seen all three. "It happened again and again. It's too quick, too fast and unexpected, unbelievable and unimaginable. We've done a lot of things to fight for the justice, for the poor, fight for the truth … it's really sad and depressing,” he told ABC’s Erin Handley, herself an alum of the Post. 

Those familiar with Hun Sen’s moves in shutting down publications — that is, plenty of former Cambodia Daily and Phnom Penh Post journalists as well as activists and NGO workers — have rolled their eyes at the official reasoning.

Brilliant reporting on cyber scams based in the country is a likely culprit, just about everyone in the know says. The reporting formed a basis for the intense international media spotlight of the last few years. Hun Sen can’t do much about BBC and Al Jazeera running exposes, but he can do something about VOD.  

It’s also part of the five-year election cycle, writes Sebastian Strangio for the Diplomat. “Historically, Cambodia’s political space has expanded and contracted in rough alignment with the five-yearly electoral cycle, tightening prior to polls and then relaxing after Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) believes its hold on power is secure,” Strangio writes. He argues that this engrained pattern has allowed VOD to continue operations until now despite Hun Sen’s tightening fist against opposition forces. 

And, as this newsletter has repeatedly noted in recent weeks, VOD’s pre-election reporting has been spectacular. 

“This is unacceptable in any circumstance, even more so when elections are set to be held in a few months’ time. Cracking down on a media outlet like VOD at the first opportunity not only serves to silence it, but also anyone else who might consider writing anything critical of the government. How can there be free and fair elections under such a climate of fear and self-censorship?” Mercy Barends, Indonesian lawmaker and chair of Asean Parliamentarians for Human Rights, said yesterday. 

The response from the broader international community has been swift. Embassies based in Phnom Penh have slammed the move and linked it to concerns over increasing authoritarianism in Cambodia. Hun Sen’s government, never one to happily embrace criticism from abroad, hit back and “essentially told Western embassies to butt out of the government’s business,” as Strangio put it. 

Other journalists in the shrinking independent media ecosystem of Cambodia are watching closely. “We’re journalists, so when we report big news, things that involve the government or powerful people, it kind of makes us wonder if we should report or what – it makes us think of self-censorship,” Chhorn Chansy, editor-in-chief of outlet CamboJA News, told Southeast Asia Globe. This SEAG piece is excellent, read it in full! 

It’s worth stressing — without publications like VOD, and without journalists at other outlets able to work in a free environment, the whole region is worse off. 

And what of those that lost their jobs? Come work for the government, if you like! 

Human Rights Watch’s deputy Asia director Phil Robertson puts it perfectly to Al Jazeera: “The real losers in all of this are the people of Cambodia, who have now lost one of the last remaining independent, muckraking, anti-corruption media outlets that stood up for the interests of people and communities losing land, livelihoods, and rights to the pernicious corruption that underpins just about everything Hun Sen’s government does.”