No Plan to Shut Beehive Radio, Gov’t Says

As questions linger over the fate of the independent Beehive Radio station in the wake of its owner’s arrest, a government official yesterday insisted there were no plans to stop it from broadcasting, despite its often critical stance toward the ruling party. “No plan to shut off the radio,” Minister of Information Khieu Kanharith wrote in a text message, without elaborating. On Sunday, Beehive’s director Mam Sonando was arrested at his home in Phnom Penh on a raft of charges related to a so-called secessionist movement in Kratie province. The arrest, which could see Mr. Sonando, 71, go to jail for up to 15 years on an insurrection charge alone, has drawn the ire of human rights groups, who called the charges spurious and an attack on freedom of expression. “Wild assertions against critics have been the stock-in-trade of Hun Sen’s intelligence and propaganda agencies for decades,” Human Rights Watch wrote in a statement yesterday. “Sonando’s arrest is also an attack on Beehive Radio, which is a key platform for promotion of human rights and democracy in Cambodia,” the New York-based group continued. …