The print edition of the International New York Times will no longer be available in Cambodia following the closure of its Thai print operation at the end of the year, a representative of the newspaper said on Thursday.
Late last month, the Associated Press reported that the International New York Times would cease printing in Bangkok due to rising costs there. It added that distribution in Thailand would also come to an end.
“INYT will not be printed in Bangkok and we will also stop the supply in Cambodia as well from Jan 1, 2016,” Tracy Wong, a representative of the newspaper based in Thailand, said by email on Thursday.
While the newspaper will still be printed in Singapore, shipping from there is too expensive to make local distribution feasible, said representatives from both of the International New York Times’ current distributors in Cambodia—Monument Books and OCS Cambodia.
“It is too expensive with the cost of airfreight,” said Heap Chhunleng, periodicals supervisor at Monument Books.
“Totally, the cost is around $5,000 [per month] including shipment from Singapore, the clearance and everything,” he added. “We can sell about $3,000 or $2,000 only per month, so it is impossible to import from Singapore.”
Oum Pisey, an accountant at OCS, said that the handful of people who subscribed to the International New York Times through her firm would need to look elsewhere for their news.
“Right now we distribute, but starting next year in January we stop distributing any more,” Ms. Pisey said. “It is expensive.”
While the International New York Times’ cited economic reasons for ending its Bangkok print operations, the decision comes against the backdrop of rising censorship and strict enforcement of lese-majeste laws—which prohibit criticism of the monarchy—in Thailand.
Eastern Printing PCL, the newspaper’s printer in Bangkok, has twice this month refused to run articles about the Thai monarchy, instead printing the paper with blank spaces where the stories were meant to be placed.
