Army officer charged in journalist murder p. 3

By: Editorial Staff

A HIGH-RANKING army officer has been charged with the murder of a journalist in Cambodia, the justice minister said.
Chan Dara, a reporter for the Khmer-language paper Koh Santepheap, which means "Island of Peace" in English, was fatally shot last month in the province of Kompong Cham, 75 miles northeast of Phnom Penh.
The provincial court charged Lt. Col. Sath Soeun with murder and sent him to a prison in Phnom Penh.
Twenty-eight police escorted Soeun from Kompong Cham to Phnom Penh.
Chan Dara was the third journalist in the country last year to be murdered or die under suspicious circumstances.
His editors and officials of the Cambodian Press Association said they believed Chan Dara was murdered because he wrote articles implicating provincial officials in corruption.
Chan Dara fled to Phnom Penh after the articles' publication because the governor's men were hunting down the journalist responsible, according to his editor, Thong Uy Pang. He was killed two days after he returned to Kompong Cham.
Foreign and Cambodian human rights organizations and journalists' groups have criticized the government for not supporting freedom of the press. Critics say that officials try to intimidate journalists, and a proposed press law is very restrictive and would have a chilling effect on reporting.