PHNOM PENH: An award-winning Cambodian journalist known for his reporting on human trafficking in the cyber fraud industry has been arrested, police said on Tuesday. Last year, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken presented Mech Dar with the Hero Award, which recognizes efforts to combat human trafficking, for his investigation into abuses at online fraud facilities in Cambodia. Authorities made the arrest on Monday after stopping a car carrying Dara and his family from Sihanoukville – a coastal city where many suspected fraud operations take place – to Phnom Penh, the Cambodian Journalists Association (CamboJA) said in a statement. Military police spokesman Eng Hy confirmed the arrest but declined to say where Dara is being held or to which court he will be sent. “We have carried out the prosecutor’s order. As for the charges, we cannot say now. We have to wait for the investigation first,” he told AFP. Dara, whose work has appeared in various international news media, sent a message about his arrest to the human rights NGO LICADHO just before the military police confiscated his phone. “We knew he was arrested, but we don’t know where he was taken or the reason for his arrest,” Am Sam Ath, LICADHO’s director of operations, told AFP. A day before her arrest, Dara posted a picture on her social media that Cambodia says shows a tourist site demolished to make way for a quarry. Local authorities labeled the now-deleted images “fake news” and called on Dara to face punishment for publishing them. Dara previously worked for the independent media outlet Voice of Democracy before Cambodian authorities shut it down last February. Since then, it has used its social media platforms to share news content, particularly about the spread of notorious “fraud farms” – criminal operations that rob victims of huge sums of money online and promote human trafficking across the region. Cambodia ranks last in international press freedom rankings, and rights groups have long accused the government of using legal cases as a tool to silence dissenting voices. Independent newspaper The Cambodia Daily closed in 2017 due to a tax dispute, while a number of other outlets closed the following year ahead of elections. The United States last month imposed sanctions on business tycoon and former prime minister Hun Sen for alleged abuses related to cyber-fraud trading, a decision Cambodia says was politically motivated.
