Via The Independent:

Cambodia’s prime minister Hun Sen shut down one of the last few independent [emphasis added] media outlets in the country on Sunday with less than six months to go until a general election.

The prime minister ordered the immediate revocation of Voice Of Democracy‘s (VOD) operating licence after the outlet published an article that he claimed intentionally slandered his son.

That sounds awful!

How “independent” is Voice of Democracy?

Via Voice of Democracy’s “about page“:

VOD was created on Jan. 16, 2003 by the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR) [emphasis added] as a local independent media outlet to produce radio programs and disseminate information to the public.

VOD is now run by Cambodian Center for Independent Media (CCIM), which was registered with the Interior Ministry in June 2007 to take over the management of VOD.

So the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR) runs VOD. Who runs CCHR? Via its “donors” page, financial sponsors include:

To summarize, the Cambodian government shut down an obvious imperialist propaganda machine financed and run by the U.S. Department of State, George Soros’ Open Society Institute, the UN, and USAID — and this is somehow, according to CNN, an attack on an “independent” media outlet.

Obviously, Democracy™ demands that the U.S. government and its globalist partners should be permitted to disseminate whatever noxious ideological smut it pleases to the people of Cambodia with no limitations.