Racy magazine lifted from newsstands [... a day after Bun Rany called for this type of publications to be stamped out, coincidence?]

Thursday, 19 February 2009
Written by MAY TITTHARA AND MOM KUNTHEAR
The Phnom Penh Post

A KHMER-language pop culture magazine was lifted Tuesday from newsstands in Phnom Penh, a day after Hun Sen's wife, Bun Rany, urged the government to stamp out the spread of racy images for their corrupting influence on youth.

Ek Sam At, editor-in-chief of the fortnightly Sameiy Thmei, or Modern Magazine, which includes lifted online images of nude women, said the street raid came without any notice.

"Officials from the Ministry of Information just went directly to collect my magazines from newsstands."

He said the ban was lifted the same day after he met with Information Minister Khieu Kanharith and agreed to clean his pages of any potentially offending images in the future.

Khieu Kanharith told the Post Tuesday that one magazine had continued to ignore his office's orders to reign in its "sexy" content, but made no reference at the time to the offending publication or an imminent move to ban it.

Reaction to the confiscation of the Free Press Magazine

03 November 2007
By Keo Nimol
Radio Free Asia
Translated from Khmer by Socheata

The Cambodian Action Committee for Justice and Equity (CACJE), the bankroller of the Free Press Magazine (FPM), issued a declaration condemning the Cambodian government which confiscated all issues of the FPM, and CACJE also warned that it will sue the government.

In their declaration issued on 02 November, CACJE and the FPM editors indicated that the confiscation of the magazine from newspapers’ kiosks is tantamount to using dictatorial force to shut down the freedom to express of opinion by the people.

This declaration also raised the fact that the confiscation of the magazine is a coward act, and it also accused that this action is nothing more than a threat against the editors of the magazine.

Hy Chantha, who claimed that he is a representative of the FPM, told RFA that the confiscation of the magazine generated a loss of about $1,000 of revenue.

Hy Chantha said: “Regarding the issue of the FPM confiscation in Phnom Penh, I am reacting back by saying that this is a shutdown of the freedom rights, and this action shows that Cambodia which proclaims to be a democracy, in reality, there is no freedom in the legal expression of opinion at all, quite to the contrary. We have a constitution which stipulates that our people have the right in front of the law, and they have the right to express their opinion. Furthermore, this magazine (FPM) in an independent magazine, and we wrote on both sides, we wrote according to the journalist code of conduct, why did the Ministry (on Information) confiscated the magazine in Phnom Penh, in Battambang, and in a number of other provinces?”

Regarding this confiscation of the magazine, Khieu Kanharith, the minister of information and government spokesman, rejected that the Ministry of Information asked the authority to confiscate the magazine.

Khieu Kanharith said: “Truly speaking, the king is inviolable, should the royal palace sue back (the FPM). Furthermore, when asked about the director of the magazine, he doesn’t know anything at all. Therefore, they are scorning the king too much, they should have left the king as some kind of symbol…”

The FPM published its first edition which included several articles related to the killing of movie star Pisith Pilika; the assassination of Chea Vichea, the former President of the Free Trade Union of Cambodia; the warning issued by Hun Sen against army chiefs; poems critical of prime minister Hun Sen; a cartoon in which the cartoonist poked fun on certain actions related to the former monarch of Cambodia, King Norodom Sihanouk.