Auction of Srey Krup Leak scene will be be banned by Cambodian censors

Bogus news story on million-dollar daughter auction causes outrage

Fri, 30 Apr 2010
DPA

Phnom Penh - An article on the front page of one of Cambodia's biggest-selling newspapers has caused outrage after reporting that a woman was auctioning off her highly eligible daughter for 1 million dollars, local media reported Friday.

The article in the Koh Santepheap newspaper said the mother was driven to distraction trying to find a suitor for her foreign-educated and beautiful daughter and decided an auction - with bids starting at 1 million dollars - would resolve the problem.

The only catch? The news story was a disguised advertisement for a movie being filmed for the national television channel CTN, and the so-called facts were the script.

But that was not disclosed until the end of the story on another page of the paper, and it seemed many readers did not get that far.

One outraged reader said he was shocked to read about the so-called auction.

"The mother considers her daughter to be like clothing - she is selling her daughter," reader Chhum Thy told the Phnom Penh Post newspaper.

After being told the story was in fact just a story, he said the newspaper ought not to confuse fact with fiction.

"Koh Santepheap is a famous newspaper, and it is not good that it runs false information," he said.

Another reader said the story could damage outsiders' perceptions of Cambodia if they failed to realize it was bogus.

Even the government weighed in with an undersecretary of state at the Ministry of Culture saying the article had implications of human trafficking, which is a serious problem in Cambodia.

He said censors would ban any auction scene from the final film.

The author of the film script told the Phnom Penh Post that she would write a letter to Koh Santepheap asking that it make it clear that the piece was fiction.