Cambodia Eviscerates Its Free Press—And the Whole Region Suffers

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — It is the final stretch of campaign season in Cambodia. The dark-blue posters for Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Cambodian People’s Party are ubiquitous, seen from the sides of buildings in Phnom Penh to the billboards along the main roads in the Cambodian countryside. Yet somehow it still doesn’t feel like a parliamentary election is happening on Sunday in this country of 16 million. In large part, that’s because there are effectively no longer any independent news outlets left in Cambodia to cover it.

The descent has been rapid. In less than a year, more than 30 radio stations and , one of Cambodia’s two independent, English-language newspapers, were shuttered; Radio Free Asia was chased out of the country and two of its reporters were arrested and charged with espionage; and , regarded as the country’s last remaining independent newspaper, was sold to Sivakumar