This week the last banner of Cambodia’s independent press was torn down, leaving little more than a bloodied flagpole. The Phnom Penh Post was bought by an investor who demanded a “damaging” article be removed, prompting a mass resignation.

With the Post compromised, all that remains is the Khmer Times (a paper denounced by its own former editor-in-chief), Facebook and the odious government mouthpiece Fresh News. There are no reliable sources of information left. Not for the Cambodian people, nor for diplomats and NGOs.

The only other reputable newspaper, the Cambodia Daily, was shuttered in September 2017 over a tax dispute many see as politically motivated.

The demise of these two papers has ripple effects. The wider world of journalism has lost a key training ground for young journalists, with both publications boasting alumni who would be the pride of most journalism schools.

Top editors and journalists from around the world, working at the New York Times, the Guardian and the Atlantic, learned their craft at the Post and Daily. Seasoned Cambodian reporters and photographers now employed by agencies such as Associated Press also started there.

I got my start as a journalist when the Phnom Penh Post commissioned some features from me. I arrived in Cambodia as a volunteer for an NGO, but my desire to become a freelance journalist was encouraged by senior editors and well-known correspondents I met at a Mexican restaurant called Cantina in Phnom Penh.

Cantina was a watering hole for foreign correspondents and staffers at the Post and Daily. When I arrived there on a Thursday in 2013 I found a welcoming attitude: “You want to be a journalist? Go on and do it then.” After a few months I submitted a freelance feature to the Post. When it ran I was so pleased that I emailed it to my family.

Cantina closed in 2015 – it’s a Circle K convenience store now. Also closed is Radio Free Asia. Two RFA reporters were arrested in November and charged with espionage: Uon Chhin and Yeang Sothearin remain in jail, though no evidence has been brought forward. Their case is similar to that of Australian filmmaker James Ricketson, who is also locked up without evidence.

The Post is today running on a skeleton staff after all the foreign reporters resigned on 8 May to protest against the firing of editor-in-chief Key Kimsong the day before for refusing a request by new owner Sivakumar S Ganapathy to take down a “damaging” article. The piece remains online but has since been edited by “Post staff”. The paper’s Cambodian staff can’t walk away so easily as they have families and dependents in a country where money and opportunities are slim.

The Post was the last vestige of the journalist community that I found on that day back in 2013. The mentors and friends I found gave me a leg up and helped me forge a career. Sadly it’s been dismantled, harassed and muzzled to consolidate the government’s grip on power.

Any Cambodian I have spoken to wants a free a press. They don’t see it as some kind of foreign imposition, as much as their leaders would have you to believe with their rhetoric of “imperialists” telling them how to run a country.

Cambodians simply want to say and read what they like without fear. As a white reporter I have more leeway but even this piece I have chosen to write anonymously due to an atmosphere of oppression that people living in liberal democracies thankfully don’t have to deal with.

In the destruction of Cambodia’s free press, we have lost one of the last beacons of free speech in south-east Asia. Now all we have is memories of a time when we picked up a copy of the Daily and read the tagline that headed its front page: “All the news without fear or favour.”