The Cambodia Daily
In 2008 and 2009, I was an editor and reporter at The Cambodia Daily, Phnom Penh’s English-language newspaper of record until it was shut down by the Hun Sen régime in 2017.
I covered especially the international tribunal for the Khmer Rouge during its first trial, of Duch; sexual violence against children, first in newspaper articles and later in a documentary; and the border dispute and military skirmishes with Thailand at Preah Vihear, among other daily reporting duties.
On January 6, 2009, cousins Phal Sophoeun and Nai Vinn, 14 and 11, were brutally raped and murdered in the Pursat province of Cambodia. I reported on their lives and their deaths with my colleague Neou Vannarin. Fed up with the constant violence against Cambodia's children, my editor in chief Kevin Doyle and I started a process of systematically reporting every child rape that came to our attention – several each week and only the tip of the iceberg. My stories later inspired a documentary, on which I was hired as an associate producer. I wish I could say the violence ended...