PHNOM PENH (AFP) – A Cambodian journalist died yesterday after he was shot this week while investigating illegal logging in the country’s northwest, police said.
Chhoeung Chheung, 63, who worked for local news outlet Kampuchea Aphivath, was shot in the abdomen with a homemade weapon on Wednesday evening in a forest in Siem Reap province, provincial police chief Huoth Sothy told AFP.
“He went to investigate problems at a community forest when he was shot,” Huoth Sothy said, adding that the journalist died at a hospital in the early hours of yesterday.
The police chief said a suspect had been arrested and confessed to shooting the journalist over “a personal dispute”.
Editor of Kampuchea Aphiwat Run Sareth could not be immediately reached by AFP.
But he told local news outlet Kiripost that Chhoeung Chheung had faced “many threats” from illegal loggers due to his reporting.
“It is a regretful incident that happened to a journalist, especially when he went to see logging in a community forest,” executive director of the Cambodian Journalists Alliance Association (CamboJA) Nop Vy told AFP.
