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    Southeast Asia, With Little Leverage, Seeks to Placate Trump on Trade

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    Southeast Asian leaders, their export-driven economies in peril, are trying to placate the president. “We may have to comply,” Thailand’s finance minister said.They were hit by some of President Trump’s most punishing tariffs, in one case as high as 49 percent. The new levies threatened to cripple their economies, which have prospered by making sneakers and tech goods for American consumers.So Southeast Asian countries like Cambodia and Vietnam rushed to appease Mr. Trump. They promised not to retaliate, unlike China and Europe. And they proposed to reduce or even eliminate their own tariffs on American imports.On Thursday, the region woke up to the good news that Mr. Trump had paused his “reciprocal” tariffs. The president suggested he had reversed course because of the market turmoil they had caused. Still, Southeast Asia is sticking with its conciliatory approach.In a statement on Thursday, the economic ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, known as Asean, said the 10-country bloc was “united in the opinion that retaliation is not an option.” (The ministers were in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for a meeting that had been previously scheduled.)Despite Mr. Trump’s 90-day pause, the anxiety here is palpable. His tariffs, the Asean statement said, are “introducing uncertainty and undermining trust in the global trade system.” Millions of livelihoods in the region are on the line. Thailand’s finance minister, Pichai Chunhavajira, acknowledged that the White House had leverage over his nation in matters of trade.“This is how you negotiate,” Mr. Pichai said in an interview. “You start with an extreme measure and then ease your demand along the way. We may have to comply.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s tariffs may be perilous for small, heavily indebted countries in global south

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      “This is very messed up. If Trump wants Cambodia to import more American goods: look, we are just a very small country!”Khun Tharo works to promote human rights in the Cambodian garment sector, which employs about 1 million people – many of them women.“I think they are very concerned about their jobs, and I think they are very concerned about their monthly pay cheque. And that has significant effects on the livelihoods of their dependent family,” says Tharo, programme manager at the Centre for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights (CENTRAL), a Cambodian workers’ rights organisation.One of the most wilfully destructive aspects of Donald Trump’s shock and awe trade policy is the imposition of punitive tariffs on developing countries across Asia, including rates of 49% for Cambodia, 37% for Bangladesh, 48% for Laos.For decades Washington had championed economic development through trade. Now, at the same time as slashing overseas aid budgets and retreating from its role in supporting developing nations, it is ripping up that idea entirely.In its place, Trump intends to impose his will on the US’s trading partners. Some are all but powerless to exact concessions, given their small size, and dependence on the mighty American market. Cambodia hastily offered to cut tariffs on US goods on Friday, in a bid to propitiate Washington.Contrary to Trump’s bombast about the US being “pillaged”, the tariffs are not in any sense “reciprocal”.Instead, they relate to the size of the US goods trade deficit with each country, and the value of its exports. (Side note: the 10% paid by the UK has nothing to do with Labour’s negotiating flair – it just came out of the fact that Britain buys about as much stuff from the US as it sells the other way).Ironically, many of the countries in the global south hit by Trump had benefited from preferential schemes offering low or zero tariffs, precisely because building up exporting capacity is an accepted path to development.Alice Oyaro, the chief executive at the charity Transform Trade, which works with producers in some of the worst-hit countries, says: “Our biggest concern is that the additional costs are pushed down to those in the supply chain who are least able to pay. Small farmers exporting everything from green beans to cocoa, and women workers in Bangladeshi factories are already finding it hard to make ends meet. They will see their incomes squeezed even more.”Tiny Sri Lanka, which has an economy 0.3% of the size of the US’s, faces a 44% tariff despite being bailed out by the International Monetary Fund two years ago and continuing to negotiate debt restructuring deals with its creditors.“It’s a highly vulnerable situation,” says Ajith D Perera, the chair of the Asia Pacific Trade Agreement (APTA) Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “Sri Lanka will lose export income and see a hit to GDP and employment – and that comes at a time when it is just coming out of bankruptcy.”He fears the scale of the tariffs could compromise Sri Lanka’s ability to meet the conditions of the IMF bailout deal. Trade is meant to be a key prop for growth, as it rebuilds its shattered economy.“I think the fundamentals have been challenged by the US decision,” he says. “25% of Sri Lanka’s exports go to the US and 70% of that is garments. I think the government needs to start discussions with the IMF immediately.”As his warning suggests, there is a risk that a grim side-effect of Trump’s trade war will be to exacerbate the debt crises already hitting heavily indebted poorer nations.Even countries that have escaped the most punitive tariff rates could still be hit hard if the prospect of a global downturn depresses the value of the commodity exports on which many rely.Keir Starmer and other leaders of the developed world have been preoccupied with their own domestic responses since Wednesday’s bombshell briefing in the White House Rose Garden.But the severity of the probable impact for the global south calls for a concerted approach, too – albeit one that will have to bypassWashington.Most of the hardest-hit countries can already trade tariff-free with major markets under projects such as the EU’s Everything But Arms programme and the UK’s Developing Countries Trading Scheme, which are designed to help the poorest nations to develop through trade.But if Trump’s tariffs stick, multinational brands focused on the US are likely to switch production rapidly to countries hit with lower rates. One garment buyer in India told me on Friday she was already hearing of factory owners in Bangladesh being told by US brands that they would now be manufacturing their sweaters in Peru, which has a rate of just 10%.The social dislocation in some of these hardest-hit economies could be profound, if such rapid shifts result in mass layoffs.And the case for debt write-offs, already clear, may become all the more pressing, if the resulting the looming global downturn sweeps vulnerable countries over the edge.The fact that the British government’s deep cuts to the aid budget now sit alongside a probable global economic downturn and heavy US penalties for exporters in developing countries makes that decision all the more shameful.Back in Cambodia, Tharo says: “The industry right now seems to be in a little bit of a hectic situation. The government is also extremely worried because they are not seeing any alternative markets at the moment. And we don’t have significant goods to be exported to any other country.“Trump doesn’t care,” he sighs. More

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      Asian countries riven by war and disaster face some of steepest Trump tariffs

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      Developing nations in south-east Asia, including wartorn and earthquake-hit Myanmar, and several African nations are among the trading partners facing the highest tariffs set by Donald Trump.Upending decades of US trade policy and threatening to unleash a global trade war, the US president announced a raft of tariffs on Wednesday that he said were designed to stop the US economy from being “cheated”.“This is one of the most important days, in my opinion, in American history,” said Trump on Wednesday. “It’s our declaration of economic independence.”He hailed the moment as “liberation day”, but the tariffs are likely to be met with loud protests from some of the world’s weakest economies. One expert said Trump was likely to be targeting countries that received investment from China, regardless of the situation in that country. Chinese manufacturers have previously relocated to countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia not only due to lower operating costs, but also to avoid tariffs.The tariffs come as many countries in south-east Asia are already grappling with the fallout from the cuts to USAID, which provides humanitarian assistance to a region vulnerable to natural disasters and support for pro-democracy activists battling repressive regimes.Cambodia, a developing economy where 17.8% of the population live below the poverty line, according to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), is the worst-hit country in the region with a tariff rate of 49%. More than half of the country’s factories are reportedly Chinese-owned, with the countries exports dominated by garments and footwear.Next worse-hit is the landlocked south-east Asian nation of Laos, a country heavily bombed by the US during the cold war, with 48%. According to the ADB, Laos has a poverty rate of 18.3%.Not far behind is Vietnam with 46% and Myanmar, a nation reeling from a devastating earthquake on Friday, and years of civil war following a 2021 military coup, with 44%.Indonesia, the biggest economy in south-east Asia, faces a 32% tariff rate, while Thailand, the second-largest, has been hit with a rate of 36%.Major US rival and trading partner China has been hit with a 34% reciprocal tariff, on top of the 20% levy already imposed.Dr Siwage Dharma Negara, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, said the tariffs on south-east Asian nations were intended to hurt China.“The administration thinks that by targeting these countries they can target Chinese investment in countries like Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Indonesia. By targeting their products maybe it will affect Chinese exports and the economy,” he said.“The real target is China but the real impact on those countries will be quite significant because this investment creates jobs and export revenue.”Tariffs on countries such as Indonesia, he said, would be counterproductive for the US, and the detail of how they would be applied remained unclear.“Some garments and footwear [companies] are American brands like Nike, or Adidas, US companies that have factories in Indonesia. Will they face the same tariffs as well?” he said.Stephen Olson, a former US trade negotiator, said countries in south-east Asia would be forced to reconsider their relationships with Washington. “A closer tilt towards China could be the result. It’s hard to have constructive, productive relations with a country that has just dropped a ton of bricks on your head,” said Olson, a visiting senior fellow at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.“The world’s largest importer has now essentially hung a sign on its border saying ‘closed for business’,” he added. “We are now faced with two plausible scenarios: Either the impacted trade partners hold firm and retaliate in the hope that Trump will be forced to back down, or they look to cut deals with Trump in order to avoid the tariffs. It is unlikely that either scenario will end well.”Other nations among the hardest hit are several nations in Africa, including Lesotho – a country that Trump claimed “nobody has ever heard of” – with 50%, Madagascar with 47% and Botswana with 37%. Lesotho, a small mountainous kingdom surrounded by South Africa, has the second-highest level of HIV infection of the world, with almost one in four adults HIV-positive.In south Asia, Sri Lanka is facing a 44% tariff. In Europe, Serbia faces a 37% rate.In addition to the reciprocal tariffs on a few dozen countries, Trump will impose a 10% universal tariff on all imported goods. That tariff will go into effect on 5 April, while the reciprocal tariffs will begin on 9 April.The US president has justified the changes by saying they are retribution for countries that have long “cheated” America, and the levies will bring jobs back to the US.But economists have warned the sweeping changes will raise costs, threaten jobs, slow growth and isolate the US from a system of global trade it pioneered, and furthered over several decades.“This is how you sabotage the world’s economic engine while claiming to supercharge it,” said Nigel Green, the CEO of global financial advisory deVere Group.“The reality is stark: these tariffs will push prices higher on thousands of everyday goods – from phones to food – and that will fuel inflation at a time when it is already uncomfortably persistent.” More

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      The Disease Detectives Trying to Keep the World Safe From Bird Flu

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      As Dr. Sreyleak Luch drove to work the morning of Feb. 8, through busy sunbaked streets in Cambodia’s Mekong river delta, she played the overnight voice messages from her team. The condition of a 9-year-old boy she had been caring for had deteriorated sharply, and he had been intubated, one doctor reported. What, she wondered, could make the child so sick, so fast?“And then I just thought: H5N1,” she recalled. “It could be bird flu.”When she arrived at the airy yellow children’s ward at the provincial hospital in Kratie, she immediately asked the child’s father if the family had had contact with any sick or dead poultry. He admitted that their rooster had been found dead a few days before and that the family had eaten it.Dr. Luch told her colleagues her theory. Their responses ranged from dubious to incredulous: A human case of avian influenza had never been reported in their part of eastern Cambodia. They warned her that if she set off the bird flu warning system, many senior government officials might get involved. She risked looking foolish, or worse.Anxious but increasingly certain, Dr. Luch phoned the local public health department, located just across the street. Within minutes, a team arrived to collect a sample from the child, Virun Roeurn, for testing in a lab.By then, Virun’s distraught parents had lost faith in the hospital. They demanded that he be sent by ambulance to the capital, Phnom Penh. His flu swab sample traveled with him.Virun died on the journey. At 8 p.m., Cambodia’s National Public Health Laboratory confirmed Dr. Luch’s suspicion: He had died of highly pathogenic avian influenza.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia Says He Will Resign

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      Mr. Hun Sen, whose party won stage-managed parliamentary elections on Sunday, has been prime minister of Cambodia since 1985. He said he would hand power to his son.Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia, one of the world’s longest-serving leaders, said on Wednesday that he would resign next month and hand power to his son.Mr. Hun Sen, 70, made the announcement in a televised address, three days after his political party had declared victory in stage-managed parliamentary elections. He said in the address that his eldest son, Gen. Hun Manet, 45, would succeed him and that the move would not violate any rules in the National Assembly because his son is also a lawmaker.In June, Mr. Hun Sen had said that he would hand over the premiership to his son at some point after the vote. But he also made clear that he had no plans to retire.“Even if I am no longer a prime minister, I will still control politics as the head of the ruling party,” he said at the time.Mr. Hun Sen, who has held power since 1985, said on Wednesday that his son would be confirmed as the new prime minister by Parliament on Aug. 22, according to local news media.His Cambodian People’s Party was always a virtual lock to sweep the election on Sunday. His government has suppressed all meaningful opposition over the years by jailing dozens of critics and shuttering dissenting news media outlets, among other tactics.In March, a prominent opposition leader, Kem Sokha, was sentenced to 27 years of house arrest on a treason charge and barred from running or voting in elections. Another opposition leader with a high profile, Sam Rainsy, lives in exile in France.Mr. Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge fighter, has long maintained tight control of most of Cambodia’s institutions. In recent years he has used social media to reinforce his power.Weeks before the recent election, Mr. Hun Sen’s usually very active Facebook went dark after the oversight board for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, recommended that he be suspended from the platform for threatening political opponents with violence. But a few days before the vote, his account was reactivated. More

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      Cambodian Election 2023: What to Know

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      Hun Sen, the prime minister for nearly four decades, applied familiar tactics ahead of Sunday’s vote to guarantee he would run virtually unopposed, and set the stage for his son to rule the country.Cambodian voters went to the polls Sunday in a Parliamentary election that could set the stage for the first change in leadership since Hun Sen became prime minister nearly four decades ago.Mr. Hun Sen, 70, has announced that at some point after the election he will hand over the position to his oldest son, General Hun Manet, 45. But he has made it clear that he will stay on as a power behind the throne.“Even if I am no longer a prime minister, I will still control politics as the head of the ruling party,” he said in June.Mr. Hun Sen underscored the dynastic nature of this transition, saying at a party meeting last year, “I will become father of the prime minister after 2023 and grandfather of the prime minister in the 2030s.”This dynastic succession within a Parliamentary system, at the sole discretion of Mr. Hun Sen, demonstrates the grip he has on power after eliminating virtually all opposition — through violence, coup, imprisonment, forced exile and manipulation of the courts. Hun Sen’s continuing grip on his country comes as the region is tilting increasingly toward authoritarianism.General Manet, the son of Mr. Hun Sen, at a campaign rally in Phnom Penh on Friday.Cindy Liu/ReutersThe authoritarianism in Cambodia is the end result, three decades later, of a two-billion-dollar intervention by the United Nations intended to foster democracy and the rule of law in a nation still torn by mass killings and civil war.“The history of the international community’s ill-fated attempt to implant democracy in Cambodia should be required reading for anyone planning future United Nations peacekeeping operations,” Craig Etcheson, a former visiting scientist at Harvard University’s School of Public Health, said in an email.The sole credible opposition party, the Candlelight party, was disqualified in May by the National Election Commission, which answers to Mr. Hun Sen, making the victory of his party all but inevitable.This was a replay of Mr. Hun Sen’s tactic in advance of the last election five years ago, when the main opposition party, the Cambodian National Rescue Party, was forced by the politicized courts to disband. As a result, Mr. Hun Sen’s party, the Cambodian People’s party, now holds all 125 seats in the National Assembly, making Cambodia in effect a one-party state.“This repeat of the 2018 election, which had no opposition, should make it clear to the world that Hun Sen has definitively turned his back on democracy,” Mu Sochua, an opposition leader who fled Cambodia to avoid arrest, said in an email.Supporters of Cambodia’s Candlelight Party during a campaign rally in Phnom Penh in 2022. The party was disqualified from running in this year’s election in May.Heng Sinith/Associated PressTo ensure that the election, and the potential succession, went according to plan, Mr. Hun Sen has attempted to stamp out all potential opposition.In February he forced the closure the Voice of Democracy, one of the country’s last independent news outlets. Scores of opposition politicians have been jailed in the last few years or have fled into exile. The most prominent opposition figure remaining in Cambodia, Kem Sokha, was sentenced to 17 years of house arrest in March.Sophal Ear, a political scientist at the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University, compared Mr. Hun Sen’s electoral manipulations with Cambodia’s record in hosting the Southeast Asian Games earlier this year.By changing rules and adding obscure Cambodian sports like ouk chaktrang, or Cambodian chess, and bokator, a Cambodian martial art, the country was able to raise its medal total to 282, an increase of 219 medals from its total of 63 medals in the previous games.A former middle-ranking Khmer Rouge cadre, Mr. Hun Sen has practiced hardball politics since being installed as prime minister in 1985 during a Vietnamese-backed government.A line at a polling station in Phnom Penh on Sunday.Tang Chhin Sothy/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSix years earlier, a Vietnamese invasion had ended the murderous four-year rule of the Khmer Rouge, during which 1.7 million people died from execution, starvation and overwork.The Khmer Rouge fled into the jungles, touching off a long-running civil war.The United Nations intervened in 1992 after a peace agreement and conducted an election in which Mr. Hun continued to hold power as co-premier with his rival, Prince Norodom Ranariddh. A tough infighter, he soon became the dominant partner in that position and then the sole prime minister after ousting Prince Ranarridh in a coup in 1997.In campaign speeches he and his surrogates emphasize his successes, including dramatic economic growth, many years of stability and the final demise of the Khmer Rouge.“Hun Sen develops the country well, the country has peace and no war,” said Mai Kompheak, 25, who drives a three-wheel taxi in Phnom Penh. “I don’t want to see Cambodia like Ukraine.”Among his various predictions of the length of his tenure, Mr. Hun Sen said in March 2021 that he would continue in the post “until I want to stop.” He has been laying the ground for a dynastic transition for at least a decade, sidelining potential challengers and publicly promoting his son, General Manet, for the job.Prince Norodom Ranariddh, center left, and Mr. Hun Sen, center right, in 1993. Mr. Hun Sen held power as co-premier before ousting Prince Ranariddh in a coup in 1997.David Portnoy/Associated Press“For all his political successes over the past four decades, Hun Sen now faces a curious challenge: how to step back from a system in which he has made himself indispensable,” Sebastian Strangio, author of “Hun Sen’s Cambodia,” wrote in an email.It will be a risky time as he loosens his grip on power, opening the way for possible infighting and internal upheavals.Beyond the office of prime minister, the election will mark a generational transition in the coming years from the old guard of top officials, many of whom will be succeeded by their sons.“There is every indication that Manet, even more than Hun Sen, will be imprisoned by the system that his father created, and hostage to its dynamics of loyalty and obligation,” Mr. Strangio added. “It is unlikely that Manet possesses the ruthless instinct that has helped his father to remain at the pinnacle of Cambodian politics for so long.”Mr. Hun Sen publicly announced his endorsement of his son in December 2021. He later added a few words of faint praise, saying, “Even if he cannot be like his father, at least his capacity should match that of his father by 80 or 90 percent.”Officials preparing a list of voters at a polling station in Phnom Penh on Saturday as they got ready for Sunday’s election.Tang Chhin Sothy/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHe had been grooming his son for many years, giving him a Western education that includes a bachelor’s degree from West Point, a master’s from New York University and a doctorate in economics from the University of Bristol in Britain.He has risen quickly through the ranks of Cambodia’s military and is now a four-star general, chief of the army and deputy commander in chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces.At the same time, he is in the inner circle of his father’s political party and the head of the party’s youth wing, giving him a platform to connect with young voters, an increasingly influential portion of the electorate.At a village gathering in May, Mr. Hun Sen also gave his son divine credentials, saying his birth was blessed by a powerful local spirit that revealed itself as a bright light that flew over Mr. Hun Sen’s house at the moment he was born.“Manet may be the child of Nhek Ta Anchanh Koh Thmar,” he said, naming the powerful spirit.Sun Narin More

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      Cambodia Strongman Hun Sen Wields Facebook to Undermine Democracy

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      The Cambodian People’s Party created its Cyber War Room about a decade ago. The goal was to support Prime Minister Hun Sen’s regime through social media propagandizing. Led by the prime minister’s son Hun Manet, a troll army used Facebook and other digital platforms to attack his father’s opposition with disinformation and even allegedly wield death threats.Fast forward to the Cambodian election taking place next month. The CPP’s Cyber War Room is back up and running. General Manet, commander of the Cambodian Army and most likely the country’s next prime minister, is reportedly back at the helm, this time defending his father’s legacy and himself.Facebook is extremely popular in Cambodia, with roughly 12 million of the country’s almost 17 million people on the site. Many people in Cambodia use Facebook as a core means of getting information, and social media platforms are critical for the few journalists still producing independent reporting. The populations of many other countries where governments have continually used social media for manipulation, including the Philippines and Turkey, rely heavily on Facebook as well. So why has state-sponsored trolling like this been allowed to endure for 10 years?It will come as no surprise when I say that Big Tech has a lot of problems on its plate, including fury about transnational digital propaganda campaigns, a global outcry about networked disinformation during the pandemic and panic about both real and hypothetic threats of generative A.I.But as one issue pops into the immediate view, the others don’t go anywhere. Instead, the global problems with our online information ecosystem compound. And while society and tech’s most powerful firms jump from one issue to the next, the abusive disinformation practices in places like Cambodia become entrenched. Governments refine their techniques, and opposition groups become less and less present because they are either trolled into submission, arrested, exiled or killed. It all benefits Big Tech, from Meta to Alphabet, which publicly seizes upon the idea du jour while cutting staffs and curbing efforts aimed at combating standing informational issues.What does this mean for the people of Cambodia? For a people who, in living memory, endured the horrors of genocide and totalitarianism?The Cambodian news ecosystem and the lives of Cambodians are controlled by Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has led them in some capacity for 38 years. He is quick to justify his long reign by pointing to economic gains before Covid — by which time the country achieved lower-middle-income status through tourism, textile exports and a growing relationship with China. His people have languished in many other ways, however: Environmental degradation is rife, corruption is commonplace, and human rights abuses are worsening.Mr. Sen and his cronies own or control all but the thinnest sliver of the country’s media outlets. They recently banned the main opposition party from running in the coming election because of an alleged clerical error. And curtailing speech on social media has been critical to the consolidation of their power. Facebook, Telegram and other platforms have been central to the CPP’s illicit, strategic and authoritarian control of Cambodia’s information space and, consequently, public opinion.Other despots have made use of highly organized state-sponsored trolling outfits to quash dissent. Some, like Mr. Sen, have also hired their kids to run them. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro’s Office of Hate, run by his sons, used social media to defame journalists and threaten opposition. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the autocrat recently re-elected as president of Turkey, benefited greatly from organized troll armies operating on Twitter. Back in Southeast Asia, the increasingly tyrannical regimes of Thailand, the Philippines and Myanmar have all deployed cyber-troops to do their oppressive bidding.Another factor is central to understanding why social media firms have failed to curb state-sponsored trolling around the globe: language.Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and other platforms have overwhelmingly focused their efforts to counter harmful and purposely misleading content in English. One reason is that they are based in the United States. Another is the malignant supremacy of Western concerns. But the larger reason is that social media companies cannot or will not supply the resources necessary to moderating content in other languages — particularly those such as Cambodia’s Khmer, which is complex and spoken by about 18 million people worldwide. That’s a small number when compared with the roughly 1.5 billion who speak English.This issue is a major problem for our own democracy too. During the 2020 and 2022 elections, social media platforms failed spectacularly in quashing hateful and disenfranchising content aimed at the tens of millions of Americans who speak Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Tagalog and a variety of other languages. This resulted in communities of color and groups already marginalized in our political system bearing the brunt of digital hate and purposely false information about these contests. According to my research and work with community leaders, this structural disinformation causes apathy, anger and civic disenchantment among minority voters, and as a result, many don’t show up to vote.The strength of global democracy is tied to the number of countries around the world that truly practice it. And while the leaders of relatively strong democracies like the United States obsess over information technology problems and political spectacle in Washington, they fail to do their duty to protect the less fortunate, both in their own country and elsewhere. This, in turn, lets social media companies off the hook.I recently returned from a lecture tour in Cambodia, where I spoke to more than 12 groups of professional journalists, citizen reporters, scholars, students and activists about the informational and political challenges they face online and offline. All told me that they still use platforms like Facebook and Telegram to coordinate, organize and share information about breaking news and elections.Facebook is especially popular in the country, in part because of its controversial Free Basics program, which offers free internet in a number of developing countries via a constrained number of websites (including, naturally, Facebook). Critics derided this as less a benevolent bid to connect the world and more a heavy-handed effort to “capture more of the market in the name of connectivity.” The promise of social media — that it can be the conduit for communication in countries with controlled media systems — remains true for the people I spoke to in Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville. But this potential is quickly dwindling as people lose faith in the safety of online communication. Meanwhile, Facebook remains a potent means for disseminating propaganda.If Meta, Alphabet and other tech firms do not take swift action to curb state-sponsored trolling, and if policymakers and civil society groups in the United States and other democracies don’t put more pressure on authoritarians like Hun Sen, then Cambodians and many others around the world will lose one of their last means of fighting back. We must speak out about the oppression surrounding the Cambodian election, which takes place on July 23 — and speak out about digital injustice.Samuel Woolley is the author of “Manufacturing Consensus: Understanding Propaganda in the Era of Automation and Anonymity” and a faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Hun Sen’s Facebook Page Goes Dark After Spat with Meta

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      Prime Minister Hun Sen, an avid user of the platform, had vowed to delete his account after Meta’s oversight board said he had used it to threaten political violence.The usually very active Facebook account for Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia appeared to have been deleted on Friday, a day after the oversight board for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, recommended that he be suspended from the platform for threatening political opponents with violence.The showdown pits the social media behemoth against one of Asia’s longest-ruling autocrats.Mr. Hun Sen, 70, has ruled Cambodia since 1985 and maintained power partly by silencing his critics. He is a staunch ally of China, a country whose support comes free of American-style admonishments on the value of human rights and democratic institutions.A note Friday on Mr. Hun Sen’s account, which had about 14 million followers, said that its content “isn’t available right now.” It was not immediately clear whether Meta had suspended the account or if Mr. Hun Sen had preemptively deleted it, as he had vowed to do in a post late Thursday on Telegram, a social media platform where he has a much smaller following.“That he stopped using Facebook is his private right,” Phay Siphan, a spokesman for the Cambodian government, told The New York Times on Friday. “Other Cambodians use it, and that’s their right.”The company-appointed oversight board for Meta had on Thursday recommended a minimum six-month suspension of Mr. Hun Sen’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram, which Meta also owns. The board also said that one of Mr. Hun Sen’s Facebook videos had violated Meta’s rules on “violence and incitement” and should be taken down.In the video, Mr. Hun Sen delivered a speech in which he responded to allegations of vote-stealing by calling on his political opponents to choose between the legal system and “a bat.”“If you say that’s freedom of expression, I will also express my freedom by sending people to your place and home,” Mr. Hun Sen said in the speech, according to Meta.Meta had previously decided to keep the video online under a policy that allows the platform to allow content that violates Facebook’s community standards on the grounds that it is newsworthy and in the public interest. But the oversight board said on Thursday that it was overturning the decision, calling it “incorrect.”A post on Facebook by Cambodian government official Duong Dara, which includes an image of the official Facebook page of Mr. Hun Sen.Tang Chhin Sothy/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe board added that its recommendation to suspend Mr. Hun Sen’s accounts for at least six months was justified given the severity of the violation and his “history of committing human rights violations and intimidating political opponents, and his strategic use of social media to amplify such threats.”Meta later said in a statement that it would remove the offending video to comply with the board’s decision. The company also said that it would respond to the suspension recommendation after analyzing it.Critics of Facebook have long said that the platform can undermine democracy, promote violence and help politicians unfairly target their critics, particularly in countries with weak institutions.Mr. Hun Sen has spent years cracking down on the news media and political opposition in an effort to consolidate his grip on power. In February, he ordered the shutdown of one of the country’s last independent news outlets, saying he did not like its coverage of his son and presumed successor, Lt. Gen. Hun Manet.Under Mr. Hun Sen, the government has also pushed for more government surveillance of the internet, a move that rights groups say makes it even easier for the authorities to monitor and punish online content.Mr. Hun Sen’s large Facebook following may overstate his actual support. In 2018, one of his most prominent political opponents, Sam Rainsy, argued in a California court that the prime minister used so-called click farms to accumulate millions of counterfeit followers.Mr. Sam Rainsy, who lives in exile, also argued that Mr. Hun Sen had used Facebook to spread false news stories and death threats directed at political opponents. The court later denied his request that Facebook be compelled to release records of advertising purchases by Mr. Hun Sen and his allies.In 2017, an opposition political party that Mr. Sam Rainsy had led, the Cambodia National Rescue Party, was dissolved by the country’s highest court. More recently, the Cambodian authorities have disqualified other opposition parties from running in a general election next month.At a public event in Cambodia on Friday, Mr. Hun Sen said that his political opponents outside the country were surely happy with his decision to quit Facebook.“You have to be aware that if I order Facebook to be shut down in Cambodia, it will strongly affect you,” he added, speaking at an event for garment workers ahead of the general election. “But this is not the path that I choose.” More

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      Cambodia Disqualifies Main Opposition Party Ahead of Election

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      Prime Minister Hun Sen, whose grip on power has lasted 38 years, has said he wants his son to succeed him, laying the groundwork for a new political dynasty.For the second consecutive parliamentary election, Cambodia has disqualified the country’s main opposition party, eliminating the only credible challenge to the ruling party of Prime Minister Hun Sen.The country’s National Election Commission on Monday refused to register the party, the Candlelight Party, for a general election scheduled in July, saying it had failed to file required paperwork and was therefore ineligible to take part in the contest.Mr. Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party currently holds all 125 seats in Parliament after government-controlled courts dissolved its main challenger, the Cambodian National Rescue Party, or C.N.R.P., before the 2018 election. The Candlelight Party, with many of the same members, took its place.Opposition party members said they would appeal the Election Commission ruling. After the C.N.R.P. was dissolved in 2017, Mr. Hun Sen has moved on several fronts to neutralize the remaining opposition. Government-controlled courts convicted about 100 opposition figures of treason and other charges, jailing some and prompting several of its leaders to flee into exile.The most prominent opposition figure to remain in Cambodia, Kem Sokha, was tried on a charge of treason and sentenced in March to 27 years of house arrest. In February, the government shut down a popular news outlet, Voice of Democracy, claiming it had published a false report. It was one of the few remaining publications to provide critical coverage of the government.The United Nations Human Rights Commission said at the time that “these actions seriously undermine the civic and political space, including the environment for free and fair elections in July.” Last month, Human Rights Watch accused the Cambodian government of stepping up verbal attacks that had led to violent assaults on members of the Candlelight Party.“Dismantling opposition parties and disqualifying, assaulting and arresting their members before election day means that there won’t be any real election at all,” it said in a statement.Members of the Candlelight Party said the Election Commission had demanded original copies of official party documents, which they said they no longer had because they had been seized in a police raid in 2017.After its ruling, the Election Commission said it had approved the registration of more than 10 other parties. These parties included those aligned with the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, or small, obscure parties that do not pose a serious electoral challenge to the prime minister.Mr. Hun Sen, 70, has held power for 38 years, eliminating opposition through the courts, through electoral manipulation, through violence and intimidation, and a coup in 1997. He has anointed his eldest son, Army chief Hun Manet, to succeed him and has indicated that the transition of family power would follow this year’s election in July.“This is a very dangerous year for Hun Sen,” Sam Rainsy, a prominent opposition leader, wrote from exile in an essay published online earlier this month. “It’s the year when he decided to establish a political dynasty straight after the elections,” he wrote. More