Last year, the US State Department honoured Mr Dara as a 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report Hero for his work to expose the issue. He was one of the few investigative freelance journalists operating in a country where press freedoms are being curtailed; Cambodia ranked 151st of 180 countries in the latest Reporters Without Borders annual report.
“Dara’s arrest comes after nearly all independent media outlets in Cambodia have been closed or silenced, amid the steady weaponisation of laws and regulations aimed at curbing free speech,” the Foreign Correspondents Club in neighbouring Thailand said in a statement on Tuesday, urging authorities to reveal the charges and confirm Mr Dara’s safety.
According to the Cambodian Journalists Alliance Association, Mr Dara sent a text after he was arrested on Monday, but his whereabouts are now unknown. The agency added that a military spokesperson had confirmed the arrest and said it had been carried out with a warrant.
The charges may be related to Facebook posts made a day previously, posting both a quarry operation and a photo of the revered mountain Ba Phnom, which is home to a Buddist pagoda, in the southeastern province Prey Veng.
Local administrations said the implication that the sacred mountain was being destroyed was untrue, and called for him to be prosecuted for “wanting to cause social disorder or confusion”.
But his arrest also comes less than a month after the US issued sanctions against a powerful Cambodian tycoon Ly Yong Phat – who is also a personal adviser to the prime minister – for “serious human rights abuse related to the treatment of trafficked workers subjected to forced labor in online scam centers.”
The government called the sanctions “politically motivated”, but those working to halt scam compound networks said the punishment was among the most significant steps taken by a foreign government since the centres first emerged.
The Telegraph worked with Mr Dara in December, to track down the families affected by a spike in bird flu infections in people in the southeast Asian country.
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