OCTOBER 11, 2005
Posted October 14, 2005
Mam Sonando, Beehive Radio (Sombok Khmum)
Legal Action, Imprisoned
Authorities arrested Sonando, the head of Cambodia’s only independent radio station on charges of criminal libel filed by Prime Minister Hun Sen. Sonando, owner and manager of Beehive radio (Sombok Khmum) was detained at his home outside the capital Phnom Penh. The prime minister filed criminal defamation charges on October 7, 2005 citing an interview broadcast in September 2005, which criticized a border agreement with Vietnam.
Hun Sen filed the charges after Beehive broadcast an interview with Sean Peng Se, an expert on Cambodia’s borders, who questioned the accord with Vietnam. A government spokesman told Voice of America radio that Sonando was jailed for “professional mistakes” because the report on the border agreement gave only one side of the story. If convicted, Sonando faces up to one year in jail.
The popular FM station is the only source of independent news broadcasting in Cambodia. Beehive leases airtime to the U.S.-government run Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, another source of conflict with the government, which has periodically banned the rebroadcast of foreign-sourced news.
Sonando, a former opposition politician, was arrested in 2003 and spent two weeks in jail on charges of incitement, discrimination and disseminating false news in connection with anti-Thai riots that swept Phnom Penh early that year. The riots followed comments attributed to popular Thai actress Suwanan Konying that Cambodia’s famed Angkor Wat Temple should belong to Thailand. She denied making the comments. CPJ sources who witnessed the riots did not believe that the radio station was a direct cause of the violence.