Cambodian freelance journalist Mech Dara in Siem Reap, Cambodia on Feb. 21, 2021. Mech Dara was arrested on Monday, Sept. 30, 2024 whereas driving together with his household to the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh.
AP/Jack Brook
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AP/Jack Brook
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — A Cambodian investigative reporter who uncovered on-line scams and corruption was charged on Tuesday with a prison offense that would land him in jail for 2 years for materials he posted on social media.
Freelance reporter Mech Dara was arrested Monday by army police at a toll sales space as he was returning together with his household to the capital Phnom Penh from a seaside vacation.
Ei Rin, a spokesperson for the Phnom Penh Municipal Court docket, informed The Related Press that Mech Dara was charged with incitement to commit a felony or trigger social dysfunction for objects he posted on-line on 4 days in late September.
The penalty for the offense is imprisonment for six months to 2 years, together with a positive. He stated Mech Dara was despatched to pre-trial detention at Kandal provincial jail outdoors the capital.
The arrest was condemned by journalists who labored with him in addition to from press freedom and rights teams.
“Cambodian authorities should launch and drop prison incitement costs in opposition to investigative journalist Mech Dara,” stated the New York-based Committee to Shield Journalists.
Shawn Crispin, senior Southeast Asia consultant for the Committee to Shield Journalists, stated Mech Dara’s arrest exhibits “simply how far Cambodia’s authorities is prepared to go to squelch unbiased reporting,”
About 4 dozen Cambodian media organizations and civil society teams issued a joint assertion calling for his instant launch and to “cease all types of harassment in opposition to media organizations and journalists.”
The assertion praised Mech Dara as “a front-line investigative journalist whose tales over the past decade have uncovered corruption, environmental destruction, and human trafficking at rip-off compounds throughout the nation, and has constantly pushed for accountability and justice.”
The U.S. State Division issued a press release saying it was “deeply troubled” by Mech Dara’s arrest. It noting that it honored him with a 2023 Trafficking in Individuals Report Hero award for his work, and inspiring the Cambodian authorities “to have interaction with numerous voices and opinions and foster a free and unbiased press.”
Mech Dara beforehand labored as a journalist for the Cambodia Every day and the Phnom Penh Put up, two once-vibrant English-language newspapers pressured to close down below authorities strain, and the Voice of Democracy radio and web site, which was closed by the federal government final 12 months.
The Paris-based group Reporters With out Borders in its newest report ranked Cambodia 151st out of 180 in its worldwide press freedom index.
The instant motion that appeared to set off Mech Dara’s arrest was his posting of two photographs from the southeastern province of Prey Veng that appeared to counsel {that a} revered mountain with a Buddhist pagoda on high was being destroyed by quarrying stone from it.
Prey Veng officers issued a press release on Fb denying that was the case. They known as on the Info Ministry to take authorized motion in opposition to him.
Though he has written concerning the setting, Mech Dara is healthier identified for reporting on human trafficking related to on-line rip-off operations. They contain people who find themselves tricked into signing up for what they consider are professional jobs in Cambodia, solely to search out themselves in digital slavery in tightly guarded compounds the place they’re pressured to swindle on-line customers.
In a rip-off generally known as “pig butchering,” they’re taught to slowly construct up a relationship of belief with their targets, typically involving romance, earlier than convincing them at hand over massive quantities of cash for pretend investments. The follow has been occurring for a number of years, based in Cambodia and Myanmar, and just lately has drawn heightened authorized consideration in america, the place individuals have been cheated out of hundreds of thousands of {dollars}.
The US in September imposed financial sanctions on one in every of Cambodia’s high tycoons due to allegations tying him to pressured labor, human trafficking and profitable on-line scams.
Ly Yong Phat, one in every of Cambodia’s richest males, can be a Cambodian senator and a number one member of the ruling Cambodian Folks’s Occasion of Prime Minister Hun Manet. Cambodia’s Overseas Ministry expressed “deep remorse over the unjust determination” to sanction Ly Yong Phat and urged that the motion might damage bilateral relations.
