Cambodian Journalist Murdered After Conducting Sensitive Investigative Reporting
A journalist who was investigating illegal logging operations has been murdered in Cambodia. The body of Hang Serei Oudom, a reporter for the Vorakchun Khmer Daily, was discovered Tuesday in the trunk of his car.
The 44-year-old, who had been missing since Sunday, was killed by several blows to the head, presumably with an axe, a high-ranking police officer said on Wednesday. The reporter’s car was discovered near a plantation in the northern province of Ratanakiri. The editor-in-chief of his newspaper, Rin Ratanak, said the journalist had been writing about illegal logging operations in which powerful government officials were also involved.
According to UN data, the country’s forest cover in Southeast Asia declined from 73 to 57 percent between 1990 and 2010 due to illegal logging. Critics accuse the government of allowing corporations to clear hundreds of thousands of hectares of land in its efforts to develop the impoverished country. In late April, environmental activist Chhut Vuthy was shot and killed by a police officer after he refused to hand over aerial photographs documenting logging activities in Koh Kong Province. In light of the outrage over the murder, Prime Minister Hun Sen ordered a freeze on land grants. (sda)
