Cambodia bans the acclaimed documentary ‘Who Killed Chea Vichea?’
June 7, 2010 by Reel Ninja
Filed under Documentaries
June 7, 2010 – New York, NY – The Cambodian government has banned the acclaimed documentary Who Killed Chea Vichea?, U.S. director Bradley Cox‘s film that investigates the mysterious 2004 assassination of Chea Vichea, one of Cambodia’s most influential union leader who spent years fighting for increased wages and improved working conditions for the nation’s 300,000 garment workers. The movie, which had its European premiere last month at the Cannes Independent Film Festival, has received accolades from festivals around the world and was named one of Amnesty International‘s Top Ten Movies That Matter.
In May, in honor of International Labor Day, trade unionists attempted to hold the film’s Cambodian premiere at the very location where Vichea was murdered, but riot police raided the scene, and dismantled and seized the screens. The Cambodian government, led by Prime Minister Hun Sen, immediately declared the film an illegal import and announced that it intends to prevent any screenings “wherever they are held.” Asserts one of the premiere’s organizers, “If the authorities acted like this, it means that some officials could have been involved in Chea Vichea’s murder.”
The making of the film was no easy feat. For much of the past decade, Bradley Cox-an award-winning activist-documentarian who is currently receiving treatment for a gunshot wound in Bangkok where he has been covering the Thai military crackdown-has been living in Southeast Asia, unraveling the mystery behind Vichea’s murder and other newsworthy stories. Cox was on the scene with his camera just moments after the fatal shots to Vichea, and conducted his own investigation over the next five years.
