6 May 2018
- Cambodia’s oldest newspaper The Phnom Penh Post is set to enter a new phase after its parent company was sold yesterday (May 5) to a Malaysian public relations company with links to the Cambodia government and rival Cambodian publisher Mohan Tirvgmanasam Banddam, better known as T Mohan, publisher of the rival Khmer Times.

Staff of the almost 26 year-old publication will reportedly be told of the sale today (May 6), while participating in a river cruise hosted by outgoing former majority shareholder Bill Clough.

The sale was announced in a statement by Mr Clough posted to the Facebook page of Cambodia’s General Department of Taxation (GDT) last night, describing new owner Siva Kumar G as a ‘well respected newspaper man, with a (sic) experienced journalist (sic) background’.
https://aecnewstoday.com/2018/sold-new- ... z5Egcv6qzh

Cambodia's Phnom Penh Post sold to Malaysian Sivakumar G
Phnom Penh Post publisher blames falling revenues for sale but others suspect government coercion before July elections.

Chad Williams, the newspaper's former editor-in-chief, said the government may have coerced the sale.

Founded in 1992, Phnom Penh Post was reportedly slapped with a $5m tax bill last year, according to reports by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

"From the outside looking in, the most troubling thing is the timing of the tax bill's settlement and the Post's subsequent sale," Williams told Reuters news agency.

"The odds of them not being connected seem incredibly remote."

"That's troubling because it suggests the Cambodian government may have used the threat of a shutdown to essentially coerce the sale."

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/05/ ... 10847.html

Newspaper takeover is 'staggering blow' to Cambodia's free press
Phnom Penh Post was seen as last bastion of independence in media under fire from PM
Sun 6 May 2018 14.36 BST

For 30 years Aun Pheap reported on corruption, human rights abuses, elections and political scandals for every major newspaper in Cambodia, a job he felt he was born to do. Now, like so many journalists who worked in Cambodia’s once free press, he is in exile, branded an enemy of the state.

For Pheap, formerly a reporter at the Cambodia Daily, which shut down last year, “this is the worst situation for the press and for journalists I have seen in my whole 30-year career”. And it has worsened further this week, with the sale of the Phnom Penh Post, seen as the last bastion of the free press in Cambodia, to the owner of a Malaysian PR company who has links to the regime of the Cambodian prime minister, HE.

The development was described by Phil Robertson, the deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, as “a staggering blow to press freedom in Cambodia”.

In less than a year, Cambodia has gone from having the freest press in the region to being one of the most repressive and dangerous places to be a journalist. In the 2018 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index published last month, Cambodia dropped 10 places from 132 to 142, and the country’s independent press was described as being “in ruins”. This was echoed by the Cambodian Centre for Independent Media, which recently concluded that the “facade” of free press in Cambodia had collapsed entirely, with almost half of journalists reporting intimidation...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... -penh-post

cambo swa wrote:Next - CEO? 440?
Would a forum such as CEO be permitted to operate or operate uncensored in China?
Pay your taxes?

Shit, it was a typo. This site was supposed to say Columbia Expats Online.

But in all seriousness, who knows. That said, we do edit the PM's name out and I'm about as interested in local politics as I am in basket weaving.