Media Remain Silent as Opposition Party Expelled

Imagine if the Brits, or the Americans, or the Germans, woke one morning and found that all members of their main opposition party had been expelled from parliament and their salaries suspended?

It would be some news story, wouldn't it?  Television and radio would be all over it. And it would cover the front page of every newspaper for weeks.

But not in Cambodia.

For when all the members of the main opposition, the Cambodian National Rescue Party, were expelled for spurious reasons and their salaries stripped, much of Cambodia's media remained mute.

In fact, of the eight biggest Khmer language newspapers, six papers didn't report the event at all. The other two gave just a brief account.

So with the thin veneer of democracy finally stripped away, Cambodia sits (at least until the next election) as an all-but one-party state.

 And Hun Sen and his CPP party, who have most of the media in a strangling grip, are doing their level best to keep the significance of that decision from their people.