Blueprint for a crackdown
Police’s ‘colour revolution’ crib notes have proved prescient, and may again
AFTER the Ministry of Interior filed a complaint with the Supreme Court to dissolve the CNRP earlier this month, the government’s law- yer Ky Tech submitted a set of documents as evidence that the opposition CNRP was involved in a “colour revolution”.
The documents appeared identical to a series of PowerPoint slides that were presented to provincial police chiefs one month earlier in Phnom Penh. Copies of the slides, which lay out the government’s belief that a sprawling web of actors are collaborating to organise and enact regime change in Cambodia, were later obtained by ThePost.
In the weeks since their dissemination, these slides have proved to be a manual for the government’s wide-ranging crackdown on a variety of organisations in the country, including the Cambodia National Rescue Party, media outlets, international organisations and foreign embassies. According to one analyst, they also provide a blueprint for future actions that will likely include further repression of civil society and NGOs.
The slides were presented to the provincial police chiefs by Deputy National Police
document reads.
All of the outlets targeted were among the few that are openly critical of the government, and the timing of the closures raised eyebrows as well, coming in the midst of a crackdown on the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party. The party was dissolved this month over allegations it was fomenting a foreignbacked “revolution”, and leaked government documents show officials sought to link several of the outlets named to the purported plot. Meanwhile, two former RFA reporters are currently facing charges of “espionage” for allegedly filing reports to their former employer, which they have denied.
In its explanation, the ministry said that some of the stations whose licences were revoked had violated their contracts with the ministry and did not seek authorisation to rent their airtime. According to the CambodiaDaily ministry, despite many reminders, the licence owners never took action.
It further claims that its order that local stations stop renting airtime to RFA and VOA was because the media outlets were not registered with the ministry. RFA has said it made efforts to register, but that the ministry never responded to its request.
VOA could not be reached yesterday.
The ministry characterised the closures as “a warning to all media” and said “there is no condition that the revoked licences can be renewed or reissued”.
In going after the Daily, the ministry wrote, the government was simply implement- ing the tax law, although observers and newspaper owner Deborah Krisher-Steele have challenged the astronomical $6.3 million bill for back taxes and fees as exorbitant.
Mahmoud Garga, spokesman for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Cambodia, said the document appeared to be “in response to a communication sent by Special Rapporteurs of the [UN] Human Rights Council”.
“Communications sent and State replies received usually remain confidential until they are published in Communications Reports submitted to each regular session of the Human Rights Council, in this case in March 2018,” he said via email.
Ministry spokesman Ouk Kimseng declined to comment, and referred questions to Phos Sovann, director-general of the ministry’s Department of Information and Broadcasting, who was unreachable.