A new report from media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders has degraded Cambodia over its record on media freedoms in 2018.
In the group’s Press Freedom Index 2018 the group said Cambodia’s increasing closeness with China and fall out with the west had led to the increased restrictions, seeing its rank slip to 143 out of 180 nations included in the report.
“Worried by the prospect of losing the July 2018 general elections after more than 30 years in power, Prime Minister Hun Sen launched a pre-emptive war against the media in which around 30 radio stations were silenced and Cambodia Daily, an English-language newspaper that had helped to nurture Cambodia’s fragile democracy, was forced to close,” it said. “The last bastion of the independent press, the Phnom Penh Post, was bought by a Malaysian businessman with ties to the Cambodian government in May 2018.”
