A Cambodian court said Tuesday that the award-winning journalist Mech Dara has been imprisoned pending trial after being charged with inciting social chaos over social media posts it called “fake news.”
The announcement came amid international condemnation of his arrest, and as Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Sun Chanthol told a forum in Washington that he was not aware of the case.
Dara was charged with "incitement to provoke serious social disorder" under articles 494 and 495 of Cambodia's criminal code, a statement from the Phnom Penh Municipal Court said.
It accused him of posting “many inciting messages” and “fake news” to his social media accounts “with ill-will to incite people’s anger against the government.”
The 36-year-old former reporter for The Cambodia Daily, Phnom Penh Post and Voice of Democracy was detained by provincial military police while traveling from Sihanoukville to Phnom Penh on Monday.
His arrest came a day after Prey Veng provincial authorities condemned as “fake news” a post he had made to Facebook that appeared to show destroyed concrete stairs leading to the pagoda Ba Phnom, a local tourist destination in the eastern province.
The court statement added Dara had admitted his guilt and was sent to Kandal provincial prison, which has better conditions than Phnom Penh's notoriously overcrowded Prey Sar prison and was part of a " model prison" program funded by the Australian government.
If found guilty, Dara faces six months to two years in prison. The charges he faces are less severe than the "espionage" charges used in 2017 to imprison Radio Free Asia reporters Uon Chhin and Yeang Sothearin, which carry terms of seven to 15 years in prison.
Scam compound reporting
After starting his journalism career as a teenager at the now-shuttered Cambodia Daily in the mid-2000s, Dara gained global attention for his groundbreaking reporting on cyber-scam compounds in Cambodia, where criminal groups abduct, torture and enslave people into carrying out phone scams.
Last year, the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken presented Dara with the State Department's annual human trafficking "Hero" award for his reporting, which brought the issue to international attention.
Dara's reporting included stories that linked Cambodia tycoon Ly Yong Phat – known as "The King of Koh Kong" and a noted adviser to Senate President Hun Sen – to scam compounds. The businessman was last month sanctioned by the U.S. government.
At an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on Tuesday, Chanthol, the Cambodian deputy prime minister, said police were "fighting" the scam compounds, which he said impact "the image of Cambodia" to the world.
But Chanthol said he had no information about Dara’s jailing.
“I'm here in the U.S., so I have no knowledge of the arrest,” he said, adding that he had only heard about the arrest secondhand. “I have not even called to Cambodia to find out about his arrest.”
However, when pressed by an RFA reporter, the deputy prime minister appeared to question the approach taken by some journalists.
"The role of a journalist is to inform, not to inflame," Chanthol said, before launching into a diatribe about RFA's reporting credibility.
“There’s no need to talk to RFA, because they will not broadcast the true and accurate information,” he added. “You have been doing it for the last 20 years … that's why I get a little upset – a little upset.”
International condemnation
Dara’s arrest and imprisonment was condemned on Tuesday by local and global organizations and the U.S. State Department.
In a post to the social media site X, the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh said it was "deeply troubled" by his arrest and called for his release.
A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department also told RFA that Dara was “a leading voice in efforts to end human trafficking and online cyber scams” and should be released from prison immediately.
“We encourage the authorities to engage with diverse voices and opinions and foster a free and independent press,” they said.
His arrest "shows just how far Cambodia's government is willing to go to squelch independent reporting," the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement on Tuesday.
France's Reporters Without Borders noted that Cambodia last year placed 151 out of 180 countries it ranks for press freedoms. Last year's succession of power appeared to have changed little, it added.
“One year into his rule, Prime Minister Hun Manet appears to be continuing the media crackdown started by his father, Hun Sen,” Reporters Without Borders said, calling for Cambodia’s government “to end their policy of systematically persecuting reporters.”
A group of 46 local non-government organizations in Cambodia also released a statement applauding the reporter's work and condemning his arrest, which they said was driven by political motivations.
“Dara is a frontline investigative journalist whose stories over the last decade have uncovered corruption, environmental destruction, and human trafficking at scam compounds across the country, and has consistently pushed for accountability and justice,” they said.
His arrest was a “clear attempt to intimidate and silence him and other journalists in a country where press freedoms are routinely curtailed,” the organizations added, also calling for his immediate release.
Edited by Malcolm Foster.