Freedom House’s Karin Kalikar’s Press Conference on 1 May 2013, and reported by Radio Free Asia on 2 May, and found its way to the front page of The Cambodia Daily and Phnom Penh Post on 3 May 2013 must have offend hundreds, even thousands of media people working in Cambodia. Until the Freedom of the Press 2013 report is available online and accessible (by me), the reporting by Radio Free Asia should be the basis of this conversation. However, it should be noted that in a summary report made available by the Washington-based Freedom House, under Asia-Pacific countries, the report did not say a word, a single word on Cambodia. And for “Declines: The most serious declines in the Asia-Pacific region for 2012 took place in the Maldives and Sri Lanka.”
Radio
Free Asia Cambodian language has quoted Karin Kalika, as saying: “Cambodia has
been classified as totally not free and we see that Cambodia received
scores that were lower, as compared to last year. It is a negative trend
in Cambodia.” On the other hand The Cambodia Daily reported that “In its
Freedom of the Press 2013 report, Freedom House said Cambodia remained “not
free” for journalists.” The Phnom Penh Post was on the same line but added
the reasons given by the report for the drop in ratings, which are: “an
increase in the number of journalists behind bars…and a significant rise in
threats and physical violence against the Press.” What does this mean? It could
have many meanings, but one among them was that Freedom House said all
journalists cannot be wrong and they did nothing wrong. This is too much too
extreme. If that is so why don’t Freedom House tell all the governments in the
world to burn down all press laws, press codes, press rules?
Actually,
Freedom House advocates the principle of one rule for all, “one size
fits all,” that is very un-American,
behaving as the guardian of the Freedom of the Press from Tokyo to San
Francisco, from the Arctic to Antarctic, from China to the Middle East to
Europe and to America. This behaviour is
not totally in conformity with the spirit of the 1993 United Nations General
Assembly resolution “to encourage and support freedom of the press all over the
world.” The fact and the truth is that the poor, poor governments, poor
countries want that kind of “UNIVERSAL FREEDOM” more than all the people at or
associated with Freedom House. Does Freedom House see the implications, now?
Why Freedom House simply advocates “UNIVERSAL FREEDOM” to countries separately
and why not pushing for “UNIVERSAL FREEDOM,” globally? Freedom House has
the answer: hypocrisy and self-serving interests. In one instance, the 2013
Freedom House summary report on the freedom of the press said: “This is the
seventh consecutive year that Freedom in the World has shown more declines than
gains worldwide. Could be the fault of Freedom House! ”. I can see how the
leadership of Freedom House shook their head in exasperation. It is long
overdue for soul-searching, I must say.
On the
Freedom of the Press Day, 3 May 2013 in Phnom Penh James Heenan, representative
of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Cambodia, for the fact that he
represents no country, but the world body, he is no different than the people
of Freedom House. He advocates the Universal Freedom of the Press, one of the
United Nations rules of law, and he was looking to impose this UN rule of law
on Cambodia, by all means. He was not the first, but he is not also the last.
This was the origin of all the conflicts that caused unnecessary victims among
some of Cambodia’s media people.
Freedom
House should ask media people at The Cambodian Daily, the Phnom Penh Post,
Kyodo News, many local Cambodian language newspapers why they kept on doing
their job, making the living, caring for their family, for their community and
their “world”. They are the people who were offended by Freedom House. They are
respectable human beings who would never allow any abuse by any government, but
they do their job within the rule, not with that kind of UNIVERSAL FREEDOM in
their head. Freedom House conceived that all media people in Cambodia were
lesser than human beings for allowing themselves to be oppressed by the government.
Both
Freedom House and Mr. James Heenan should take into consideration the
observations made by Mr. Pen Bona (not related to me) of Radio France
International (RFI) who wisely avoided putting all the media people in one
basket, saying that in Cambodia there are 3 groups of media people, first those
who disseminate the news accepting some limitations under pressure, and they
are rarely in trouble, second those who are independent but follow the rules
and the code of conduct and doing their job professionally, and they are
remotely in trouble, and third those who ignore the professional code of
conduct and being political advocates, and they are vulnerable and prone to be
in trouble.
Last
Friday I met a Cambodian friend of mine, I kept for about 20 years now. He said
that, as an individual, Americans and Cambodian-Americans are not trustworthy.
They care for personal interests and driven by, not to say obsessed with
personal interests and do not care a bit about the consequences, and the unintended
consequences that may be fallen on other people, especially local people. Now
think about it, it reflects exactly what Freedom House is, and what Mr. James
Heenan is. However, I had to correct my friend’s extreme view by telling him
that there are also many Americans and Cambodian-Americans who are benevolent.
6 May 2013
Professor Pen Ngoeun
Advisor, University of Puthisastra, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
pngoeun@puthisastra.edu.kh
