Cam News Book

Cambodia’s first Japanese-language newspaper launched in Phnom Penh on Wednesday as a free, monthly publication—with its main aim to promote Cambodia as a place to do business to Japanese people living in Burma. The Phnom Penh Press Neo, a 20-page full-color newspaper published as the sister paper to Burma’s first Japanese newspaper, the Yangon Press, was set up with an investment of $80,000 and features news on Cambodia’s business community and economy along with information on where to eat and stay, and how to get around Phnom Penh. Seu Songhy, a translator for the Phnom Penh Press Neo, said 5,000 copies of the newspaper have been distributed in restaurants, hotels and bars in Phnom Penh and the country’s two main airports, plus a further 20,000 copies in Burma, where the publication also launched on Wednesday. “There are a lot of Japanese people in Burma interested in Cambodia and they want to know about real estate and business news, because there is no information on th...

For more than 25 years, the English-language newspapers in Cambodia have had the freedom to print the news as they saw fit, exposing corruption, writing about patronage, telling stories about deforestation, forced evictions and fraud. —News Analysis— The freedom, which eclipsed that seen in the Khmer-language press, had political roots, said journalist Sebastian Strangio, who relocated to Phnom Penh for a reporting job in 2008. It came as part of the “diverse civic forces” unleashed in the early 1990s by the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia, the peacekeeping operation that controlled Cambodia between 1992 and 1993, Mr. Strangio said. Those beginnings led him to harbor suspicions that the foundations of the likes of The Cambodia Daily and its crosstown rival, the Phnom Penh Post, where Mr. Strangio worked, were shakier than appeared on the surface. “There was also a sense that the freedom our papers enjoyed—a freedom unique in Southeast Asia—was the result of an in...

Sameth Nhean’s travel documents, which Cambodia issues to authorize the repatriation of its nationals from the U.S., expired on August 8. —News Analysis— He may still face deportation to Cambodia—the country where he holds citizenship yet has never set foot—but for now, it’s unclear whether Mr. Nhean, 35, will be reissued the papers necessary to expel him from the U.S., where he has lived since he was 3 years old. For months, the U.S. and Cambodia have been engaged in a diplomatic back-and-forth over an agreement that allows the U.S. to deport Cambodian permanent residents, like Mr. Nhean, who were convicted of felonies. Last week, an Interior Ministry official confirmed that the Cambodian government had stopped issuing new travel documents, in a likely attempt to press the U.S. into renegotiating the agreement. But a document from a USAID-funded NGO that supports deported Cambodians upon their arrival in Phnom Penh suggests the U.S. still intends to repatriate about 100...

The U.S. is set to impose visa restrictions on four countries including Cambodia, enforcing a law that allows sanctions when foreign countries refuse to accept nationals who have been deemed to be in the U.S. illegally, according to a U.S. government official. A U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesman told U.S. network CNN of the visa suspensions on Thursday morning and a U.S. government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the news later in the day. “The [U.S.] State Department has received a notification from DHS to suspend visas,” the official said. The move comes after months of negotiations between the U.S. and Cambodia over a 2002 agreement that allows the U.S. to deport Cambodians convicted of felony crimes. It was not yet clear whether all Cambodians would be affected, and details of the restrictions would not be released until the U.S. had finished notifying the concerned governments, the official added. “Exact details won’t be re...