Cambodia arrests award-winning journalist who exposed human trafficking and scam compounds

An award-winning journalist known for his investigative reports on human trafficking has been arrested in Cambodia in a further blow to its press freedoms.

Mech Dara was travelling with his family from the coastal city of Sihanoukville to the capital Phnom Penh when authorities stopped his car and arrested him, the independent Cambodian Journalists Alliance Association (CamboJA) said in a statement.

Mr Dara was handed the Hero Award in 2023 by US secretary of state Antony Blinken for his investigations into massive scam compounds staffed mostly by trafficked workers in Cambodia.

He was arrested after sharing posts on social media about a rock quarry. Local officials claimed on Monday his work was an attempt to foment dissent in the country.

Mr Dara managed to send an SMS to Cambodian human rights group Licadho saying he was being arrested by military police before his phone was seized, spokesperson Am Sam Ath said.

“We knew that he was arrested but we don’t know where he was taken or the reason for his arrest,” Am Sam Ath told AFP, adding that the military police had confirmed Dara's arrest without revealing the charges.

A family member whom CamboJA did not name said Mr Dara’s car was stopped at a toll booth at the entrance to the expressway to the capital when police arrived in a military vehicle and five other cars.

The relative said the authorities cited an arrest warrant but did not show the document and asked the family members to stay inside the car while they seized Mr Dara’s phone.

A day before his arrest, the journalist had posted two images of an alleged quarry operation at a revered mountain Ba Phnom, which has a Buddhist pagoda, in the southeastern province of Prey Veng.

Prey Veng authorities called the now-deleted images “fake news” and accused him of “wanting to cause social disorder or confusion”, while calling for punishment.

Mr Dara previously worked as a journalist for the Cambodia Daily and the Phnom Penh Post, two formerly thriving English language newspapers forced to shut down under government pressure, and the Voice of Democracy radio station and website, which was closed by the government last year.

“Every newsroom I work in gets silenced,” he told the BBC after then Cambodian leader Hun Sen ordered the closure of Voice of Democracy last year.

Mr Dara is best known for his reports in the past few years about human trafficking connected to online scam operations.

The activity involves tricking people into signing up for what they believe are legitimate jobs in Cambodia, only for them then to be kept in virtual slavery in compounds often housing casinos as well, where they go online to target people around the world.

The US State Department was aware of reports of Mr Dara’s arrest, a spokesperson said, adding: “We are following developments closely with great concern.”

Cambodia has been the location of cyberscams that include “pig butchering”, a term that refers to gaining victims’ trust through dating apps or other sites and steering them toward bogus investments.

The Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders in its latest report ranked Cambodia 151st out of 180 in its international press freedom index.

Ten activists from prominent youth-led environmental group, Mother Nature, were sentenced to between six and eight years in jail on charges of plotting against the government.