MOSCOW, October 13 (RIA Novosti) - Three people have been arrested in connection with the murder of journalist Taing Try in eastern Cambodia’s Kratie province, Cambodia Daily reported.
The arrests included three local officials: a police chief, a military police officer and a Cambodian armed forces soldier, all of them suspected traders in the country’s illegal timber industry, Agence France Presse said.
Try was an independent journalist in his late 40s who wrote for several local papers. He was shot at about 1am on Sunday in a village in the east of the country. He and a colleague had been investigating a warehouse which belonged to the area’s military police chief. Their car had gotten stuck on a dirt road. Try’s colleague had gone for help, and came back to find him murdered.
"He went to an area where he was told illegal logs were being transported," Sok Sovann, president of Khmer Journalists for Democracy, told Agence France-Presse. The journalist’s persistence cost him his life.
Police were able to quickly apprehend the suspects after their Lexus SUV getaway vehicle overturned 200 meters down road from the crime scene. Once the owner of the vehicle was identified, his associates in the illegal trade were quickly found and the criminals were arrested.
Oum Phy, the deputy police chief of Kratie province, noted that one of the men had confessed to the murder after getting into an argument with the journalist, though their motives were still being investigated, the Associated Press noted.
Illegal logging and the unsanctioned use of land are major problems in Cambodia. Unchecked logging, aided by government indifference and the support of influential businessmen, has reduced Cambodia’s forest cover from 73 percent in 1990 to 57 percent in 2010 according to the UN, Agence FrancePresse said.
Try is the third reporter activist to have been killed while investigating illegal timber smuggling since the 2012 deaths of Hang Serei Oudom and Chut Wutty. The military police officer charged with Oudom’s killing was acquitted in 2013. Seven other journalists have been murdered in Cambodia since 1993.
“This cold-blooded killing shows again just how dangerous Cambodia is for journalists, especially those who investigate wrongdoing about the country’s land and forests,” said Phil Robertson, Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch Asia, the Cambodia Daily reported. He noted that too often, attackers carry out their attacks with impunity.
The Cambodian Center for Independent Media echoed Robertson’s words, calling on authorities to “end the cycle of impunity for those who perpetuate violence against journalists,” the source noted.
The country’s reporters have faced harassment, death threats, bribery, and charges of extortion. Try himself had been arrested and tried in 2010 on extortion charges against timber smugglers. He had been called to the local court as late as last month.
