After 28 days in an over-crowded prison cell, nearly 50 major global media stories, untold closed-door meetings and backroom deals, and one coerced apology video, renowned Cambodian journalist Mech Dara was released from Takhmao prison this morning on bail.
While some of the details will remain opaque, one thing is absolutely certain: the release would never have happened were it not for an overwhelming grassroots advocacy campaign that emerged almost overnight on Dara’s behalf. The spontaneous global movement demonstrably influenced both U.S. and Cambodian government actions and delivered an outcome decidedly against the odds.
As a friend of Dara, the outpouring has been moving and its ultimate impact an obvious relief. As an observer of Cambodia’s rights and state crime space, it is virtually unprecedented.
In a context where the United States longs for status quo normalcy with strategically located Cambodia, USAID Administrator Samantha Power’s visit this week was dominated by Dara’s contentious case. Among other engagements, she met with key civil society actors and others close to Dara in the hours immediately preceding her one-on-one meeting with Prime Minister Hun Manet on Tuesday morning. That would never have been possible absent a concerted and effective public (and backchannel) outcry on Dara’s behalf.
Following that meeting, Cambodia’s politically captured court system jumped into a full course reversal. At 11 a.m., Dara was ushered out of his prison cell and taken back to court for an out-of-protocol meeting with the judge for “further questioning.” He was there until 7 p.m. and then returned to Takhmao prison. According to experts with strong knowledge of Cambodia’s legal protocols, this is an exceptionally long timeframe and implies some sort of protracted negotiation. Perhaps corroborating that perspective is the delay in the start of Power’s press conference, which ended up commencing while Dara was still at the court. At this press conference, Power declined to comment on the status of Dara’s case but confirmed that it was a major component of her conversation with the prime minister.
Then, at 8:39 p.m., government mouthpiece outlet FreshNews Media released a coerced apology video from Dara. This video makes no mention of Dara’s extensive corruption-exposing scam coverage in recent years. In it, he merely recants the social media posts from September – the official rationale for his charge, widely viewed as a contrivance.
Finally, early on Thursday morning, Mech Dara was released from Takhmao and driven home by associates.
This is an exciting outcome for Dara, his friends, and for me personally. It also sends an immensely positive message from the international community to the regime that arresting journalists is not the correct solution to their globally damaging organized cybercrime racket. It remains to be seen, but there may yet be carry-on benefits that transcend this individual case of politically motivated detention.
However, it is important to note that this is not an unmitigated victory for human rights in Cambodia. The episode reveals much about the underlying dynamics.
First, it bears noting that Dara was far from the only political prisoner held by the regime. His release does very little, if anything, to strengthen the odds of others’ release. This was a perfect storm and while there are some lessons for future advocacy that we should draw from Dara’s case, it is a long way from progress for the many other victims of Cambodia’s captured justice system.
Second, the coerced apology video itself is emblematic of the tactics of a brutally pragmatic regime, which seeks not only to silence critics but to humiliate them and undermine their potential utility as heroes or examples for other to emulate. While this video in no way diminishes Dara’s brilliant international reputation, it will have the intended domestic chilling effect.
Third, Dara’s case demonstrates that while pressure was effective, colder political calculations still rule the day. Dara’s team offered an apology letter or video over three weeks ago. Today, after an unprecedented global outcry and some high-level meetings, such a video conditioned his bail reconsideration. Yet, there was far more behind the scenes here than a non-convincing apology video. At a moment where their humanitarian bona fides are coming under heavy fire, Samantha Power and USAID leave Cambodia with a major political and values/reputational victory.
To get this, the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) was able to extract for themselves: 1) a high-profile U.S. visit; 2) generally muted language about the government’s various abuses resulting from said visit; and, critically 3) $17 million in new health funding from USAID. In likelihood, these “new” funds are more accurately “repurposed” from those withdrawn last month following TVPA sanctions, which hit Cambodia as a result of evidenced government complicity with human trafficking.
Put more bluntly, the regime just held a journalist as ransom for $17 million plus some much-needed image rehabilitation, and won.
In his recently released book “The Politics of Coercion,” Neil Loughlin argued that “coercion is embedded as the regime’s most important strategic advantage,” a thesis strongly supported by this case. The instrumentalization of Cambodia’s court system (among other low and high intensity coercive acts against critics and opponents) has a long and documented history. Dara’s case also exemplifies how coercion is used not only against Cambodians, but is also effectively deployed in the CPP’s international relations with ostensibly stronger countries.
The violent pragmatism of the CPP’s domestic and international approach has undoubtedly driven regime durability over the last four decades, and Loughlin’s work offers an immensely helpful resource for diplomats and observers attempting to navigate the Cambodian political minefield. Yet, he speaks little of the other enduring reality of CPP rule: the intractability and pervasiveness of criminal embeddedness. Certainly, coercion and elite criminality go hand-in-hand, but the two are equally important for understanding this regime.
These co-existing realities as borne out in Dara’s case should serve as a wake-up call for the United States on several fronts. Most pressingly, despite Dara’s release, he is now effectively neutralized in the role he previously played on the front lines of evidence-generation about Cambodian state criminality. Bail is a thin form of freedom. At the end of his coerced apology, this liminality was foreshadowed as Dara swore never to write anything critical of leadership or the country again. Any random sample of his prior reporting could be used as evidence to revoke bail.
In essence, he can’t go on as before. With civil society reporting now fully silenced, investment in the construction of a viable evidence-generating apparatus on Cambodian state criminality is desperately needed. The glaring lack thereof should be prioritized as a national security threat, given the implications.
Closer to home, U.S. constituents must also look at contemporary Cambodian reality as they consider the political choices before them at the polls next month, with one candidate vowing repeatedly and defiantly to deploy state violence against all those who have exposed his own extensive criminal exploits. Acceptance of criminal autocratic behavior begets more of the same. As we celebrate Dara’s release and chart a path forward, Americans would be well-advised to resist such a pernicious tide at home, as well as abroad.