Gerald Flynn, a British journalist and staff writer for the environmental news site Mongabay, has been banned from entering Cambodia, where he has reported on environmental issues for the last five years and spent two years of those years as president of the Overseas Press Club of Cambodia.
Flynn, 33, left Cambodia via Siem Reap International Airport in the northwest on January 2 when immigration officials told him that he had entered the country on a “fake” visa.
On January 5, he attempted to return but was denied entry and told that his name had been added to a blacklist on November 25, shortly after he appeared in a France24 documentary that was critical of the government’s environmental policies.
Covering the environment is a sensitive issue in Cambodia, more so since the Cambodia Daily was closed in 2017 and the Phnom Penh Post sold off to government friendly interests the following year, due to tax disputes.
In July, a Cambodian court sentenced 10 Mother Nature environmental activists to lengthy prison terms. In December, a Cambodian journalist who covered illegal logging was shot and died two days later from his wounds.
Flynn, who holds a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and a Masters in International Relations from the University of Reading in the U.K., spoke with The Diplomat’s Luke Hunt about his ordeal and the issues confronting the journalists who cover Cambodia.
