About The Author
Harish C. Mehta is a specialist writer on Indochina who consid-ers Phnom Penh his second home, and has travelled widely in Cambodia since 1989. He was educated in Lucknow, India, and the United States. He is married to a journalist, and lives and works in Bangkok. He was awarded the Journalist of the Year prize by the Press Foundation of Asia, Manila and Mitsubishi, Japan in 1989; and a Freedom Forum Fellowship, Washington, in 1995. Mehta has logged about one hundred visits to Cambo-dia and, in the course of writing this book, interviewed prime ministers past and present, journalists and officials, many of whom were persecuted by one regime or another. He has spent a considerable amount of time delving into the archives in Phnom Penh, consulting journals in Khmer, French, and English, dating back to the 1930s. The author won the first "Asian Print Media Write Award" in June 1997, sponsored by the Asian Media Information and Com-munication Centre and Singapore Press Holdings for his re-search paper on the Cambodian press.
About The Book
Cambodia Silenced-The Press under Six Regimes is the first book on the history of the Khmer press and its struggle for existence under six regimes since the 1930s. It survived colonial rule, a major coup, genocide, civil war, and Vietnamese occupa-tion. The press was censored and shut down, Khmer journalists were threatened, attacked, and murdered, and several foreign correspondents were captured and killed while covering the civil war. The French denied newspapers licenses to publish, and an equally docile press existed under Sihanouk's rule. Sihanouk wrote arcane and elegant editorials in his journals to rebut criticism in the foreign press about his style of governance. The Lon Nol regime subjected the press to heavy-handed censorship and, the Khmer Rouge, on seizing power, shut it down ahead of the genocide. The Heng Samrin regime's journals were never allowed to stray from the official line. Newsmen were still being attacked and murdered after the royal government came to power in 1993, and journalism remained a dangerous profession.
"Mehta writes about the complex and often mystical politics of Cambodia with unmatched sensitivity and candour. The story should be read by princes as well as by those who would replace them. As Mehta makes clear, while authoritarian govern-ments [in Cambodia] can deny press freedom, they do not govern long, or well, in its absence". Allan E. Goodman, Executive Dean, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington, DC.
Introduction
Cambodge, Cambodia, Kampuchea will always lure us in. The very mention brings a certain kind of addict, Indochina junkie, out of the bush, makes him head for those magical destination names. There is a romantic lilt to Hanoi, Saigon, Vientiane, Phnom Penh; an intrigue sallies from the very names, the taste of the edge is evoked. You might just make it to the next, or last, flight in or out. Any landing or take off could prove fraught. The edge is still there after all these years of revolution, anarchy, genocide, and occupation. Change is as constant; evidence is in the lately liberated Southeast Asian nations that you have monitored continually with a tooth comb. Staying abreast of the nuances of their polemic and politics, their insider trading is frankly a nightmare. You could do better with jungle telegraph. Back in the sixties it was Marvin Gaye who popularised "I heard it through the grapevine". Cambodia, Phnom Penh, is the tap root of this vine. It has never been a particularly easy place to get around. Incidents, events happening up in Siem Reap or Stung Treng can often take days to filtrate back down to capital Phnom Penh. Many folk are illiterate, a newspaper mere bumpf, their horizons are limited, their worries concerned with the passage to market access to their paddies, and the health of their children. Radio and television are only coming to those places with access to gen-erators or power. War has stopped air play on so many occasions. Cur-tailed liberties, arrested official information flow, the media in existence went back to bush telegraph and disseminated rumours and hearsay. The radio could get back to playing badly recorded martial music. To stay in touch with today's Cambodia, I have but one suggestion subscribe to the Phnom Penh Post. Sincerely, it can be said that it is one of the world's few journals that demands attention, cover to cover. For, it is a colour separation tabloid-sized paper with top-of-the-line reported and photographed stories. The regular columns and advertisements, droll and entertaining. You are kept informed on the vagaries and weirdness of the kingdom by a motley crew of expats and locals. An American NGO worker and his wife, Michael and Kathleen Hayes, had the audacity to get going back in the dim days before the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) really got up and running. They threaded an incred-ible desktop needle through the wacky snakes and ladders minefield of government bureaucracy. The resulting twelve page black-and-white sheet toed a different neutral line on a shoestring budget. Always an inside line and always indepth that neither Khmer nor foreign journal got so consis-tently on-the-money. It was not like this before and, for the Khmer press, is not so now. The various factions in the bipartite presidential pattern condone regular vio-lence against the mouthpieces of their opposition. Grenades and AK-47s are used regularly to these ends. Foreigners are left mostly alone though threats and libel suits are employed to keep the goal posts moving. Theo-retically, since the UN days, there is no censorship, only persuasion. In Cambodia it helps to have a history. For those of the press corps, resident or visitor, who broadly fall into veteran category, there exists a pecking order and favouritism. Many old hands from the sixties and sev-enties, from the height of Cambodia's demise, flock regularly back for auspicious occasions. The first return of King Sihanouk brought a gather-ing of hands that included most of the original script, and those who played them, from the epic The Killing Fields. When you don't meet the stars themselves, you will certainly encounter their spirits.
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