By AFP - Agence France Presse
Cambodian journalist investigating illegal logging shot dead
A Cambodian journalist died on Saturday after being shot this week while investigating illegal logging in the northwest of the country, police said.
Chhoeung Chheung, 63, who worked for local news channel Kampuchea Aphivath, was shot in the abdomen with a homemade gun on Wednesday night in a forest in Siem Reap province, provincial police chief Huoth Sothy told AFP.
“He went to investigate problems in a community forest when he was shot,” Huoth Sothy said, adding that the journalist died in a hospital in the early hours of Saturday.
The police chief said that a suspect had been arrested and confessed to shooting the journalist over “a personal dispute.”
Run Sareth, the editor of Kampuchea Aphiwat, could not immediately be reached by AFP.
But he told local news agency Kiripost that Chhoeung Chheung had faced “many threats” from illegal loggers because of his reporting.
“It's an unfortunate incident that happened to a journalist, especially when he went to see logging in a community forest,” Nop Vy, executive director of the Cambodia Journalists Alliance Association (CamboJA), told AFP.
Since 1994, at least 15 journalists have been killed in the Southeast Asian country, according to the Cambodian Center for Human Rights.
In 2014, Taing Try was shot dead while investigating the illicit timber trade in the northeastern province of Kratie.
Three suspects - a former soldier, a policeman, and a military police officer - were arrested for killing the journalist.
The dispute over the protection or exploitation of natural resources has been a contentious issue in Cambodia, with environmentalists threatened, imprisoned, and killed over the past decade.
In July this year, a court sentenced ten local environmentalists to between six and eight years in prison for their activism.
Last month, Ouch Leng, a prominent Cambodian environmentalist who received the 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize, was detained for a day along with five other activists while investigating illegal logging in a national park in northeastern Stung Treng province.
Uncontrolled illegal logging has contributed to a sharp decline in Cambodia's forest cover over the years, according to activists.
From 2002 to 2023, a third of Cambodia's primary moist forests - some of the most biodiverse in the world and an important carbon sink - have been lost, according to the monitoring website Global Forest Watch.
suy/sco
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