One of Cambodia’s last remaining independent newspapers yesterday announced it was closing after 24 years, the latest in a series of blows to critics of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.
The Cambodia Daily said today’s edition would be its last after it was slapped with a US$6.3 million tax bill which its publishers said was politically motivated.
“The power to tax is the power to destroy. And after 24 years, one month and 15 days, the Cambodian government has destroyed the Cambodia Daily, a special and singular part of Cambodia’s free press,” the newspaper said in a statement.
Photo: AFP
The paper blamed “extra-legal threats by the government to close the Daily, freeze its accounts and prosecute the new owner” for the closure.
The announcement came hours after opposition leader Kem Sokha was arrested for treason.
The Cambodia Daily was set up in 1993 by veteran US journalist Bernard Krisher. It publishes in English, but also carries some articles in Khmer and is often critical of the government.
Krisher sold the paper to his daughter Deborah Krisher-Steele in April.
Last month the Cambodian tax department said the paper owned US$6.3 million in back taxes, with Hun Sen branding the owners “thieves” in one of his recent speeches.
The paper said the figure was “arbitrary” and not based on an audit of its books, with management accusing the government of targeting it for its critical reporting.
“It’s a dark day for press freedom in Cambodia,” editor Jodie DeJonge said yesterday.
“We just can’t believe that on Monday morning we are going to wake up and not come and put out another newspaper. It’s a tremendous loss,” he said.
The paper is not the only independent media organization to come under pressure.
Tax probes have also been announced by the government against the US-funded Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Voice of America (VOA), who say they have complied with local laws.
A group of local radio stations that carried Khmer-language VOA and RFA content have also been shuttered or banned from broadcasting their content.
Much of Cambodia’s media is either owned by people close to Hun Sen or avoids criticizing the government.
“The closure of the Cambodia Daily is part of the rapidly deteriorating human rights situation within the country,” said Kingsley Abbott, from the International Commission of Jurists.
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