Cambodia Daily to close after US$6.3 million tax row with government
Newspaper said Monday’s edition would be its last
One of Cambodia’s last remaining independent newspapers announced on Sunday it was closing after 24 years, the latest in a series of blows to critics of strongman premier Hun Sen.
“The power to tax is the power to destroy. And after 24 years, one month and 15 days, the Cambodian government has destroyed The Cambodia Daily, a special and singular part of Cambodia’s free press,” the newspaper said in a statement.
The paper blamed “extralegal threats by the government to close the Daily, freeze its accounts and prosecute the new owner” for the closure.
The Cambodia Daily was set up in 1993 by veteran American journalist Bernard Krisher in the aftermath of Cambodia’s genocide from 1975-78 and subsequent civil war. It publishes in English but also carries some articles in Khmer.