The strangled and beaten body of a man identified as a Cambodian journalist was found dumped in a suitcase outside the capital

Journalist murdered, body found in suitcase
(DPA)

27 April 2007



PHNOM PENH - The strangled and beaten body of a man identified as a
Cambodian journalist was found dumped in a suitcase outside the
capital, police said Friday.


The body was found in a deep gorge in Phnom Srouch district, around 40
kilometres from the capital, Wednesday and was later identified as
journalist Pov Samarth, 28, by family members, said Keo Pisey, Kampong
Speu provincial police chief.

Samarth, the publisher of the obscure Voice of Khmer Krom newspaper,
had been reported missing several days earlier and the body had been
in the suitcase for two to three days, Pisey said.

'We can't say if this was a revenge killing or not at this stage, nor
if it was related to his work. He wasn't killed at this site, but this
place has become a popular spot to dump bodies,' Pisey said. 'The
killer probably disposed of the body here to eliminate clues.'

Officials said Samarth himself was not a member of the Khmer Krom - a
group numbering millions of ethnic Cambodians whose land was ceded to
Vietnam after the fall of French colonial Indochina.

The topic of the Khmer or Kampuchea Krom is politically sensitive on
both sides of the border, with some elements of the Khmer Krom
campaigning actively for independence and complaining consistently of
suffering human rights violations at the hands of Vietnamese
authorities - reports Vietnam denies.

However, Cambodia is generally perceived as having one of the freer
presses in the region, and the Ministry of Information has previously
come under fire for not introducing greater controls, leading to
accusations that some individuals use easily obtained professional
accreditation as a thinly veiled tool for extortion.

Police said they were still investigating possible motives for
Samarth's murder.

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