In Country’s Nascent Blogs, Critical Speakers Are Scarce

November 6, 2012
By Colin Meyn and Kaing Menghun-
Excerpt The Cambodia Daily

Read the full article at: http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/in-countrys-nascent-blogs-critical-speakers-are-scarce-5256/

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But in Cambodia’s nascent blogosphere, direct criticism of the government is scarce and self-censorship is widespread.

“There’re not many bloggers writing about social issues or politics,” said Sopheap Chak, a blogger and project coordinator at the Cambodian Center for Human Rights.

“This is probably self-censorship because you can see all of the cases of harassment of journalists offline.” In the past two months, there have been multiple cases of critical voices in the media being silenced.

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“In a blog, [the government] can track down the name of the writer, so I’m still afraid,” he said.

Ou Virak, president of the CCHR, said that this fear of being singled out by the government is suppressing critical voices online. “There is a sense that you can be easily targeted,” he said.

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Access is already restricted in Cambodia to a number of websites that post highly critical content about the ruling CPP, including the KI-Media and Khmerization blogs.

The government, however, has continually denied involvement in blocking them despite emails obtained by numerous media outlets in February 2011 that revealed a secret government policy to pressure ISPs to deny access to specific websites affiliated with the political opposition.