Cambodia’s Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the treason convictions and 14-year prison terms of two journalists jailed over a Facebook photograph taken in a restricted border zone, ending their appeals through the courts, Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press reported.
The two, Phorn Sopheap of Battambang Post TV Online and Pheap Pheara of TSP 68 TV Online, were convicted of supplying a foreign state with information prejudicial to national defence. “The court has decided to uphold the ruling of the appeal court,” the Supreme Court’s deputy chief, Taing Sunlay, said after a short hearing.
The charge falls under Article 445 of Cambodia’s Criminal Code, which carries seven to fifteen years. Because the two are Cambodian nationals, the offence is classified as treason under Article 439, which labels the same acts espionage when a foreigner commits them. The 14-year terms sit one year below the maximum for the charge.
With the ruling, the journalists have exhausted their appeals through the ordinary courts. A royal pardon under Article 27 of the constitution could exempt them from serving their sentences, though it would leave the convictions in place. An amnesty would erase the convictions, but Cambodian law defines amnesty as an act of the National Assembly under Article 90, not a power the King holds alone.
The two were detained on 31 July 2025 after returning from an assignment in Oddar Meanchey province, on the disputed frontier with Thailand, having posted a Facebook photograph that showed them with Cambodian soldiers near Prasat Ta Krabei. Thai government agencies and media republished the picture, saying it showed newly laid anti-personnel mines, which would breach the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty that both countries have ratified. Cambodia denied placing new mines and said any in the area dated from earlier decades of conflict. The journalists denied wrongdoing and said they had permission to be where they took the photograph.
The Siem Reap Provincial Court convicted the two and sentenced them to 14 years each after a one-day trial in December 2025. The Battambang Appeal Court upheld the convictions on 26 March. A member of the defence team, Kang Pothe Vireak, said the two should have been tried under Cambodia’s press law rather than the penal code.
Cambodia’s Minister of Information, Neth Pheaktra, defended the ruling, saying the court had reached an independent decision based on the law, which he said protects journalism while safeguarding national security, political stability and national defence. Rights groups read the outcome differently. Bryony Lau, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, told the Associated Press that the prosecution showed the authorities’ disdain for media freedom and restricted independent information for Cambodians. Sorn Sarath of the Cambodian Journalists Alliance Association called the 14-year terms the harshest ever imposed on Cambodian journalists.
The same court had upheld the incitement conviction of the opposition figure Rong Chhun less than a week earlier, the Associated Press reported. The Cambodian Journalists Alliance Association said more than 30 people, including activists and journalists, were arrested between mid-2025 and early 2026 over social-media posts about the border dispute. The two countries signed a ceasefire in late December; border crossings have not reopened.
Reporters Without Borders ranks Cambodia 151st of 180 countries in its 2026 World Press Freedom Index, up from 161st a year earlier.