Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders today expressed dismay at ban slapped on all national media preventing them from carrying extracts from a report on deforestation published by the environmental organisation Global Witness The report, released on 30 May 2007 and entitled “Cambodia’s Family Trees”, accuses officials, including those close to Prime Minister Hun Sen, of forming a corrupt and “kleptocratic elite” which was responsible for the destruction of the natural landscape. The Ministry of Information on 8 June banned any reproduction of the report after denying the allegations and dismissing it as a “political attack” against the government. Information Minister, Khieu Kanharith, said, “The media have had one week to put out their news and that is more than enough. Newspapers can refer to it but not reproduce it. If they break the ban, we will take the necessary legal steps”.
1 comment:
How Cambodian Minister of Information is Duped
The cats are already out of the bag. it is foolish to try to herd them back into it. There is a much better means to conduct damage control. But I'm not going to tell!
What Global Witness did on its Cambodia's Family Trees report, which implicated many well-connected individuals in the plundering of Cambodian natural resources, was a classic text-book report, or, shall I say, a perfect execution of a very challenging task.
By moving to ban Global Witness's report, whether on his own initiative, or on order from the government, Mr. Khieu Kanharith has played right into Global Witness's hands.
As minister of information whose unforunate jurisdiction was to handle this hot potato (GW report), Mr. Khieu Kanharith should know better that every report (regardless of what kind of a report it is) has one thing in common: A target audience!!!
Without going into the details of what Global Witness mission is (know yourself, know your enemy; a hundred battles, a hundred victories: Chinese saying), Global Witness's target audiences could be prioritized as follow: Donor nations, Cambodian government officials and the well-educated, and Cambodian population in general.
As producer of the report, GW could have predicted with certainty that the Cambodian government will react negatively upon seeing the report. Thus, what GW does, if my hypothesis is correct, is to bank on such negative reactions to maximize the distribution of its report. Thanks, in part, to the Cambodian Ministry of Information's move to ban the report, the desired effect has been achieved.
Through the magic power of the Internet and the ever vigilant news media, those, esp. the prioritized target audiences, who would otherwise not give much weight to the report, would undoubtedly pay a much greater attention to scutinize it. And those, who would not care about, or otherwise be reluctant to possess such report, would certainly be compelled to make discretionary efforts to obtain one (the desire to know is greater than compliance with political line). Lesson learned: In this Information Age, it is impossible to control the flow of information; the best one can do is to manage it.
In a sense, despite their antagonistic relationship, Global Witness and the Cambodian Ministry of Information seem to work well together in tackling tough issues. If society's prevailing concerns were to find flaws or ailments within its organs so that people could repair and/or rebuild it to keep it healthy, then Global Witness and the Cambodian Ministry of Information have done a superb job. They have exposed what ailments our society has. And it is up to us to decide whether to find remedies to cure it, or leave it alone until death comes to claim its soul.
Chanda Chhay
Washington, D.C. (USA)
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