Cambodia's government has increasingly been accused of targeting local and foreign journalists reporting on sensitive issues, raising the question of whether reporting in the Southeast Asian country is becoming riskier than ever.

In one of the most recent incidents, UK journalist Gerald Flynn was denied reentry into Cambodia at Siem Reap International Airport last month following a short vacation in neighboring Thailand.

Flynn said Cambodian immigration officials informed him that his visa was fake and that he was "permanently banned" from returning to Cambodia. He was then forced to board a flight back to Thailand.

Flynn, a staff writer at Mongabay, a US-based conservation news website, had recently contributed to a documentary from a French media outlet about Cambodia's environmental challenges — findings that the Cambodian government labeled as "fake news."

Nathan Paul Southern, a journalist and operations director at the Eyewitness Project, an investigative journalism organization, has reported regularly in Cambodia in recent years. He warns that any reporting that embarrasses the state is dangerous.

"Inside Cambodia, pretty much everyone is self-censoring, quitting the profession or running away. Reporting on environmental issues is especially dangerous, but covering other crises that embarrass the government [is] getting people killed or arrested, too," he told DW.

In December, Cambodian environmental journalist Chhoeung Chheng was shot while investigating illegal deforestation in the Siem Reap province. He later died from his wounds. Authorities claimed they had caught the........

© Deutsche Welle