Award-winning journalist Mech Dara arrested for incitement in Cambodia

Bangkok, October 1, 2024—Cambodian authorities must release and drop criminal incitement charges against investigative journalist Mech Dara, who was arrested Monday by military police at an expressway toll booth near the coastal city of Sihanoukville, the Committee to Protect Journalists said.

“Journalist Mech Dara’s arrest and detention shows just how far Cambodia’s government is willing to go to squelch independent reporting,” said Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative. “Cambodia’s new Prime Minister Hun Manet should turn the page on the last four decades of crass authoritarianism under his father Hun Sen, allow the press to report free of harassment, and unconditionally release Mech Dara immediately.

A military police spokesperson told the Cambodian Journalists Alliance Association that Mech Dara was arrested on September 30 under a warrant but did not say where or why he was being detained. The association said Phnom Penh Municipal Court charged the reporter with “incitement to disturb social security” on October 1 and placed him in pre-trial detention in the capital’s Kandal Provincial Prison.

Mech Dara’s arrest came hours after authorities in southeastern Prey Veng Province issued a statement saying the journalist had caused “social disorder” by posting photos on Facebook, since deleted, which appeared to show that a quarry operation had destroyed stairs leading to a Buddhist pagoda.

Mech Dara won an award from the U.S. State Department in 2023 for his reporting on human trafficking connected to online scam centers in Cambodia. He previously reported for the independent Cambodia Daily and Voice of Democracy, both of which were shuttered under government pressure.