- Cambodian journalist Ouk Mao was arrested May 16 by plainclothes military officers, according to his wife and colleagues.
- Mao had previously faced legal charges and physical attacks as a result of his environmental reporting.
- It is not yet clear what charges, in any, Mao currently faces. As of 10:30 p.m., Mao’s wife said he remained in temporary detention at the Stung Treng provincial prison.
BANGKOK — Cambodian journalist Ouk Mao, whose reporting on illegal logging has seen him attacked both physically and legally, was arrested May 16.
Ek Cheat, Mao’s wife, spotted an unmarked white Lexus pull up outside their home in Stung Treng province sometime around midday. Three plainclothes officers entered Mao’s home, handcuffed him and told him that “their boss wanted to speak to Mao about a piece of land,” before taking him to an undisclosed location, Cheat said in a phone interview.
Colleagues of Mao, who work at a local online media outlet, have since identified the men as military police officers. According to his colleagues, Mao arrived at the Stung Treng Provincial Gendarmerie Headquarters around 1 p.m. May 16.
According to Cheat, as of 10:30 p.m., Mao remained in Stung Treng provincial prison awaiting his court hearing.
Human rights monitoring NGO Adhoc also confirmed the arrest, noting that the men who detained Mao were not wearing uniforms.
Mao’s lawyer, Rin David, was able to confirm that Mao had been arrested but could not provide more details surrounding the circumstances of his arrest or what this means for the various charges Mao faces as a result of his environmental journalism.
Brigadier General Eng Hy, the spokesman of the National Gendarmerie, told Mongabay that he could not speak about the arrest, as the prosecutor’s investigation was ongoing. Stung Treng provincial prosecutor Sing Sokheung could not be reached for comment, while provincial administration spokesperson Men Kong said he had no details of Mao’s arrest.
Neither Environment Minister Eang Sophalleth nor Information Minister Neth Pheaktra responded to requests for comment.
“Ouk Mao’s arbitrary arrest, carried out without a warrant, is an escalation of the severe judicial harassment the journalist has long endured,” Cédric Alviani, Reporters Without Borders’s Asia-Pacific bureau director, said in a statement that called for Mao’s immediate release.
Problems began for Mao in June 2024, when he was questioned by military police about his investigation of land clearing in a community forest in Stung Treng province. In August 2024, he helped Mongabay uncover that a mining company connected to Cambodia’s military was logging the forest. After Mongabay published the story, Mao was charged with illegally clearing state-owned forest, despite his own well-documented history of defending forests in Cambodia.
Since then, Mao has continued to report on deforestation in Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary. As a result, he was physically attacked in March 2025 by assailants, including at least one former police officer. He is also facing new charges of defamation and incitement, which were brought against him by the Ministry of Environment.
These charges came in response to Mao giving an interview with Radio Free Asia’s Khmer language service, but Mao’s arrest followed both the publication of a Mongabay report detailing the legal and physical attacks against Mao as well as an interview Mao gave to Radio France International’s Khmer language service that has since been viewed more than 65,000 times at the time of writing.
The physical attack on Mao and the authorities’ subsequent handling of the numerous charges against him have outraged Cambodian netizens who took to Facebook to question the authorities’ motives. The arrest comes against a backdrop of shrinking press freedoms in Cambodia and the government’s campaign to silence civil society actors that have been critical of the long-ruling Cambodian People’s Party.
“I am sorry to hear this unexpected news [regarding the] arrest of Ouk Mao,” said Nop Vy, director of Cambodian Journalists Alliance Association (CamboJA), which monitors attacks on journalists and press freedoms in Cambodia.
Vy said the arrest is likely aimed at scaring other journalists and human rights defenders into silence, especially those working on environmental issues.
“I am calling on the authorities to be open [about the case] and to release him immediately,” Vy said.
Shawn Crispin, the Committee to Protect Journalists’ senior Southeast Asia representative, called on authorities to release Mao and “drop any and all trumped-up charges” against him. “Harassing journalists for reporting on environmental issues is a bad look for Cambodia, home to some of the region’s most egregious ecological crimes, and yet another mark on the country’s abysmal press freedom record.”
Banner Image: Ouk Mao, by Nehru Pry/Mongabay.
Reporter who revealed deforestation in Cambodia now charged with deforestation
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