Having dissolved the main opposition party, Cambodia’s ruling party faced certain victory in the July 29 national election even as its crackdown on dissent continued. This multipart series featured profiles of voters, politicians and the communities looking ahead to the election.

RESPONSIBILITIES

I designed, coded and set up the site for multiple languages using Jekyll. I participated in daily editorial planning meetings and helped maintain the site.

I built a slideout drawer for a timeline and reference panel. The English and Khmer names of political parties, leaders, and historical figures were automatically highlighted and linked as new stories were added.

On the eve of the election, the Cambodian government ordered internet service providers to block Voice of America and 14 other news websites. It specifically targeted news organizations that provided objective and sometimes critical coverage of the ruling CPP party and the election.

In order to circumvent this censorship, we set up a duplicate version of the project using GitHub and GitHub Pages. We were quickly able to mirror the original site and provide all of the original VOA Khmer election coverage as well as ongoing reporting in English and Khmer. The mirror site was identical to the original version and was available throughout the election weekend. It was promoted by journalists and civil society groups.