New Malaysian owner of Cambodia’s Phnom Penh Post fires editor after story about sale, staff resign in protest

The 26-year-old Phnom Penh Post was sold to Malaysian investor Sivakumar S. Ganapathy over the weekend for an unknown sum

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Kay Kimsong (left), who had worked at The Post for 10 years, said that the representative of the newspaper’s new owner had told him he made a big mistake by allowing the publication on the front page of the article saying a PR firm linked to the prime minister had bought The Post. Photo: AFP

Published: 12:29pm, 8 May 2018Updated: 10:34pm, 8 May 2018

Cambodia’s last independent newspaper is running on a skeleton staff with no foreign reporters or editors after a dispute erupted with the company’s new Malaysian owner over a story linking him to the country’s ruler Hun Sen.

Seven more staff walked out of The Phnom Penh Post on Tuesday a day after the paper’s new owner Sivakumar S. Ganapathy’s sacked editor-in-chief Kay Kimsong for refusing to remove a “damaging article” detailing links between Sivakumar’s public relations firm Asia PR and the prime minister.

Five senior staff, including national reporter Ananth Baliga and business editor Brendan O’Byrne who wrote the piece, also resigned in protest on Monday.

“This basically means we have no foreign news reporters or editors at the Phnom Penh Post. A sad day. Can’t say how much admiration I have for Khmer reporters who are staying despite everything,” said Post journalist Erin Handley on Twitter.

By Tuesday evening, the story in question was removed from the website and replaced with another about the staff walkout. Baliga tweeted a photo of the print version of the story, saying it was “watered down”.

“A lot of us are heartbroken today,” Handley said earlier.