What an edition of a Siam Reap newspaper reveals about law and politics in Cambodia and constraints on freedom of speech.
Fellow Pearls correspondent Jack Waterford used to tell his Canberra Times cadets, of which I was lucky to be one, that the best way to learn about a town was to spend a morning in its petty-sessions court and to read the local newspaper.
Sitting in a courtroom in Cambodia was going to be beyond the ken of this monolinguist so, sitting instead on a stool in a cool Siem Reap bar with a nice cold drink, I turned to the Kiripost on-line news site.
Kiripost is independent of government and bills itself as having a focus on business and tech news, while also covering “health, education, lifestyle and more”.
No mention of government or politics there, let alone the courts.
Maybe that was to be expected when all around town are posters praising the Cambodia People’s Party of that long-time political player Hun Sen.
The man who was head of government for the best part of four decades remains party president and is also currently President of the Senate.
He is flanked in the posters by Heng Samrin, President of the National Assembly from 2006 to 2023 after holding manifold other posts, in various parties, including as a Vietnamese-supported leader in the early 1980s after splitting from the Khmer Rouge.
On the other flank is Hun Sen’s son, Hun Manet, the current PM, who took over from his father in 2023.
The party commands all but a handful of seats in the National Assembly.
So, into Kiripost I dived, first coming across some upbeat business-type yarns, including “Australia is expanding scholarships, flexible study pathways and support for Cambodia’s public education system” and “Cambodia has hosted 145 international travel agents on familiarisation trips since May”.
But, despite no mention of them in the “About” par on the outlet’s website, there was plenty of content that was legal and political.
Indeed, those two subjects appeared just too closely aligned in too many cases.
From the same edition, readers learned of on-line journalists Phorn Sopheap and Pheap Pheara losing their appeal against 14-year prison sentences for allegedly disclosing information that might have had the effect of “undermining national defence”.
They had asked the Appeal Court of Battambang to reconsider the legal classification of the offence and drop the charge, as they had no intention to share information with a foreign state, according to LICADHO, the Cambodian League for the Defense of Human Rights. Kiripost said Sopheap and Pheara, from TSP 68 TV online had been arrested last year, accused of treason in their reporting of the Cambodia-Thailand border clash. The evidence? Posting an image taken near an identifiable temple of them both standing alongside Cambodian soldiers and what appeared to be unplaced landmines.
“Thai media outlets republished the photo, alleging that Cambodia had planted new landmines in the area …” Kiripost continued. The two journalists “further stated that their posts were intended to inform the public that Cambodian soldiers were still standing strong. They did not intend to provide information to any foreign state or receive any payment from Thailand.”
Fourteen years.
There are plans for a further appeal to the Supreme Court.
What was, sadly, more expected than the above outrage against press freedom was the three-year jail terms imposed on opposition voices.
In a country in which the Supreme Court abolished the major Opposition party inside the last decade, it was no surprise to read in the same edition that “social media influencer” and former Arey Ksat Deputy Governor Thy Sovantha and her husband, Phae Sovannarith, had copped the three-year sentences.
Kiripost quoted The Khmer Times saying the pair had been found guilty of “demoralisation of the army” over Facebook posts published during last year’s border war.
Kiripost continued: “Sovantha, who has 2.5 million followers on her Facebook page, was a former opposition activist in 2017 and was fired as Deputy Governor of Kandal province’s Arey Ksat city by Senate President Hun Sen in August 2025.
“Hun Sen said she posted a series of inappropriate messages on her Facebook page over the border conflict, considering her as an undisciplined official for national affairs…
“The [municipal court] judge said the Facebook posts contained harmful information that weakened the morale of Cambodia’s armed forces and threatened national security.”
And the bad news doesn’t end there. What about when you’re actually in prison?
That same edition of Kiripost reported that Cambodia’s prison authority says improved healthcare and prison clinics have reduced inmate deaths and emergency cases.
It quoted Director-General Chhorn Sanath: “The department has implemented strict measures to prevent and manage infectious diseases. High priority and special attention have been given to inmates with high-risk health conditions, such as heart disease and mental illnesses as well as those who have no relatives to support them.”
Sounds good, until Kiripost reminds readers that “the department did not disclose the number of inmate deaths or the mortality rate.”
Andrew Fraser began his journalistic career in 1979 and has been practising criminal law since 2008.