Writer: AFP News agency
Published: 14/09/2012
Bangkok Post
A Cambodian military police officer has been
arrested in connection with the brutal killing of a journalist who
exposed illegal logging activities, police said.
This
picture, taken on September 11, shows Cambodian police officials
pulling the body of dead local journalist Hang Serei Oudom (C) from a
car trunk in Ratanakiri province, some 600 km northeast of Phnom Penh. A
military police officer has been arrested in connection with the
killing of Oudom who exposed illegal logging activities, according to
police.
Hang Serei Oudom, a reporter at local-language
Vorakchun Khmer Daily, was found in the boot of his car in northern
Ratanakiri province on Tuesday.
He appeared to have suffered axe
blows to his head, according to police, the latest death in a country
where environmental activists regularly face threats.
"We arrested
a military police officer named Ean Bunheng on Thursday," interior
ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak told AFP on Friday, adding that the
suspect was understood to have met the victim on Sunday, the night he
disappeared.
Police found "a blanket stained with blood" at the
suspect's house -- which is also a karaoke parlour -- and discovered the
victim's shoes nearby, the spokesman said.
Several other people
who were seen drinking with the 44-year-old journalist at the karaoke
venue that night have also been questioned, but the spokesman declined
to provide further details.
Pen Bonnar, of rights group the
Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association, told AFP those
questioned included the suspect's wife and the son of a provincial
military police commander who Oudom had accused of wrongdoing in his
reporting.
In his final article on September 6 Oudom alleged the
son, who is also a military policeman, of smuggling logs in
military-plated vehicles and extorting money from people who were
legally transporting wood.
Local activists said fellow reporters had recently expressed fears for Oudom's safety because of his exposes.
Reporters
Without Borders on Thursday called for a thorough investigation and
urged police to explore links between his murder and his coverage of
environmental issues.
The murder comes less than six months after
prominent environmentalist Chhut Vuthy was shot dead by a military
policeman after he refused to hand over pictures showing logging in
southwestern Koh Kong province.
Rampant illegal logging
contributed to a sharp drop in Cambodia's forest cover from 73 percent
in 1990 to 57 percent in 2010, according to the United Nations.
In
its haste to develop the impoverished nation, the Cambodian government
has been criticised for allowing well-connected firms to clear hundreds
of thousands of hectares (acres) of forest land -- including in
protected zones -- for everything from rubber and sugar cane plantations
to hydropower dams.
6 comments:
I wish cambodia has a death penalty! Cambodia should pass this law, people who took other people's life must pay back within a death penalty...
Ean Bunheng wife must spent the rest of her life behind bar for killing this reporter....
Prosecute this guy put him and his father in prison if found quilty of murdering Hang Srey Odom.Please don't let this murdered unsolve proof that your gov't is competence if enforcing law and order,do justice a favor the sake if the victim and his families.
The wife help arranged the killing the journalist, they call him to come over for drinks and then kill him! I agree the military police's wife should spend the rest of her life in jail.....She's the one who start all the idea of killing the journalist..
I read that the son of the military chief, who the article accused of illegal logging, was arrested but released. Why? He should be the prime suspect. Is this a case of scapegoating, arresting the innocent or the less guilty and releasing the real killer?
More Khmer heroes dies under the Khmer Rouge Hun Nal regime of 33 years.
Wake up! Stop voting for Hun Nal. Hes still a Khmer Rouge. There is no justice under the Khmer Rouge regime.
Post a Comment