Sunday, June 24, 2007

Cambodge Soir still face uncertainties

21 June 2007
By Mayarith
Radio Free Asia

Translated from Khmer by Heng Soy

The negotiations for a reopening of the French-language daily newspaper Cambodge Soir still face uncertainties this week.

Kong Sothanatith, the spokesman of the Cambodge Soir Editorial Team, said that earlier on, there was some hope that the problems will be quickly resolved, however, after some of the meetings held (between the Editorial Team and the management of Cambodge Soir) to find an agreement, a number of issues led him to think that there is no certainty that the problems could be resolved.

Kong Sothanarith said: “The obstacle stems from the fact that we cannot find some certain common grounds yet. What we are negotiating on, they are purely talk. We don’t have anything written down between the two parties. There is less tension, and there is more understanding that we should do something together again, however, on paper, we did not achieve anything yet. Because of this, we are still eagerly waiting and we still have some hope.”

Cambodge Soir announced its closing on Wednesday of last week after its employees went of strike to protest the firing of a French reporter who wrote an article about the Global Witness report on the family of the thieves of the Nation (Cambodia’s family ties in English).

The newspaper employees said that a Cambodge Soir director was not pleased with this article, and he criticized Soren Seelow, the French reporter, of being biased towards one side.

The closing of Cambodge Soir generated reactions from various national and international sources, as well as from the French embassy in Cambodia, from Reporters Without Borders, and from the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ).

On Thursday, IFJ issued a statement supporting Cambodge Soir reporters who oppose the closing of this newspaper, and IFJ called for a quick resolution on this issue so that the French-language newspaper could resume its publication again.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Apres avoir connu ce qu'est vraiment CS, moi je m'enfou!