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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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      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

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      Cambodian Opposition Leader Is Found Guilty of Treason Ahead of Election

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      Kem Sokha, co-founder of the defunct Cambodia National Rescue Party, was accused of conspiring to overthrow the government and sentenced to 27 years’ house arrest.Kem Sokha, Cambodia’s most prominent opposition politician still in the country, was sentenced to 27 years of house arrest Friday on a charge of treason and banned from running or voting in elections.Cambodian courts are not an independent branch of government, and the sentence was the latest step that Prime Minister Hun Sen has taken as he crushes what remains of a political opposition in advance of a July election. Mr. Hun Sen, who has been in power for 38 years, has said he is planning to run in that election and has anointed one of his sons, Lt. Gen. Hun Manet, to succeed him in the future.“It is not right, unfair and can’t be accepted,” said Ang Oudom, one of Mr. Kem Sokha’s lawyers, after the sentence was announced. He said he would appeal but added: “It is a political case, and only politicians can decide.”Outside the courthouse, where several ambassadors had gathered to hear the verdict, W. Patrick Murphy, the U.S. ambassador to Cambodia, said the case was fabricated and a miscarriage of justice.“Denying Kem Sokha and other political figures their freedom of expression, their freedom of association, undermines Cambodia’s Constitution, international commitment and past progress to develop a pluralist and inclusive society,” he said.Mr. Kem Sokha, 69, is a co-founder of the now-dissolved Cambodia National Rescue Party, known as the C.N.R.P., along with Sam Rainsy, who has been in self-imposed exile since 2015 to avoid arrest for defamation, among other charges. Mr. Kem Sokha was arrested in September 2017 in a showy late-night raid on a charge of colluding with the United States government to take power in Cambodia.That charge was based on a statement he made in a video about receiving advice from American pro-democracy groups. He has denied the charges, and Washington has dismissed them as “fabricated conspiracy theories.”From abroad, Mr. Rainsy said the charges against Mr. Kem Sokha were “based on a grotesque reading of a standard speech he had made years earlier in Australia.”Mr. Kem Sokha was moved from prison to house arrest just over a year after he was detained and then freed from house arrest in November 2019 but banned from politics. Soon after his arrest, the Supreme Court dissolved the C.N.R.P. after the government accused it of plotting its overthrow.The party posed the most serious threat to Mr. Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party, known as the C.P.P., and the C.N.R.P.’s dissolution cleared the way for Mr. Hun Sen’s party to sweep all 125 seats in the National Assembly in a 2018 election.Mr. Kem Sokha’s arrest and the termination of the C.N.R.P. were part of a wide-ranging crackdown on opposition politicians, activists and members of the press that has seen hundreds of people jailed or sentenced in absentia after fleeing abroad. In June, a court in Phnom Penh convicted at least 51 opposition figures of “incitement” and “conspiracy” as well as other charges.Among those convicted was Theary Seng, a lawyer and civil rights activist with dual American and Cambodian citizenship, who is now serving a six-year sentence in a remote prison in Preah Vihear Province.Human Rights Watch, which has strongly condemned each step of the crackdown in Cambodia, called on foreign governments Friday to reassess their approach to Mr. Hun Sen’s government.“It was obvious from the start that the charges against Kem Sokha were nothing but a political ploy by Prime Minister Hun Sen to sideline Cambodia’s major opposition leader and eliminate the country’s democratic system,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch.He said the sentence “isn’t just about destroying his political party but about quashing any hope that there can be a genuine election in July.” Ming Yu Hah, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director over Southeast Asia, emphasized the same point, saying, “This verdict is an unmistakable warning to opposition groups months before national elections.”Mr. Hun Sen put the point in graphic terms in a speech in January, in which he warned his political opponents to prepare for assault. He said he could “gather people belonging to the C.P.P. to protest and beat you,” and added, “Be careful. If I can’t control my temper, you will be destroyed.”Sun Narin More

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      Norodom Ranariddh, Royal Player in Cambodian Politics, Dies at 77

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      He rode a wave of royalist sentiment to win a United Nations-sponsored election in 1993, but was later ousted in a power struggle with his co-prime minister.Prince Norodom Ranariddh of Cambodia, a son and brother of kings who shared the post of prime minister until he was ousted in a coup, died on Nov. 29 in France. He was 77.His death was announced on Facebook by Cambodia’s minister of information, Khieu Kanharith. No cause was given, but Prince Ranariddh had been in ill heath since being badly injured in 2018 in an automobile accident in which his wife, Ouk Phalla, was killed.Prime Minister Hun Sen, the man who ousted Prince Ranariddh in a coup and crushed his political party, said in a statement that he was heartbroken over the loss of “one of the royal noble figures who had sharp will, was extremely intelligent and was loyal to the nation, religion and monarchy.”Bearing a striking resemblance to his popular and charismatic father, King Norodom Sihanouk, the prince rode a wave of royalist sentiment to win a United Nations-sponsored election in 1993.The election followed the 1991 Paris peace accords that officially ended a nearly decade-long civil war in Cambodia. Before the civil war, 1.7 million people were killed from 1975 to 1979 during the genocide under the communist Khmer Rouge.Prince Ranariddh’s electoral rival, Mr. Hun Sen, a hardened former Khmer Rouge soldier who led a communist government backed by Vietnam in Phnom Penh, refused to accept the results of the election and threatened renewed fighting.In a compromise, Prince Ranariddh was named first prime minister, Mr. Hun Sen was named second prime minister and government ministries were shared by officials of their two parties, the royalist Funcinpec and the communist Cambodian People’s Party.Prince Ranariddh with Prime Minister Hun Sen in 2004. The two had shared power a decade earlier, but Mr. Hun Sen ousted the prince in a power struggle.David Longstreath/Associated PressA professor of law who was educated in France and had been teaching there, Prince Ranariddh was not suited to leadership in the harsh political landscape of postwar Cambodia. Mr. Hun Sen, though he was nominally second in command, easily outmaneuvered him.“He had to work through the communist state apparatus including the army and security forces, all firmly under the control of his no less communist coalition partner and rival,” Lao Mong Hay, a leading Cambodian political analyst, said in an email.In 1997 the two men’s private armies clashed in a two-day battle in the streets of Phnom Penh; Prince Ranariddh, who had fled to France, was ousted as co-prime minister, and Mr. Hun Sen declared himself “the only captain of the ship.” Dozens of Funcinpec’s senior officials and military commanders were hunted down and killed.Mr. Hun Sen remains in power today, a self-declared strongman in what is effectively a one-party state.Prince Ranariddh returned from abroad in 1998 to lead a weakened opposition party. When it lost an election that year, he was named president of the National Assembly, a post he held until 2006.The prince renounced any claims to the throne from among many eligible heirs, and in 2004, when his father abdicated, his half brother Norodom Sihamoni was named king by a Throne Council of which Prince Ranariddh was a member.Neither brother inherited their father’s charisma and political adroitness. King Sihamoni, who had been a dancer, reigns as a purely ceremonial monarch.The former King Sihanouk remained a revered figure in Cambodia until his death in 2012 at 89.Prince Ranariddh’s up-and-down political career continued. After being ousted as leader of Funcinpec in 2006, he founded the Norodom Ranariddh Party, was driven into exile by a conviction for embezzlement, was pardoned and returned to Cambodia.He later launched another short-lived party, the Community of Royalist People’s Party, then rejoined Funcinpec and was re-elected party leader. The party never again posed a challenge to Mr. Hun Sen.Prince Ranariddh in 2011. He had an up-and-down political career after being ousted.Tang Chhin Sothy/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNorodom Ranariddh was born on Jan. 2, 1944, the second son of King Sihanouk and his first wife, Phan Kanhol, a ballet dancer attached to the royal court.The prince was sent to boarding school in Marseille, France, then received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Provence in 1968 and a law degree in 1969.He obtained a Ph.D. at the university in 1975, then took a post there in 1979 teaching constitutional law and political sociology.In 1983, after a coalition of opposition armies formed an armed resistance against Mr. Hun Sen’s Vietnamese-installed government, Prince Ranariddh left his teaching career at the urging of his father and became leader of the royalist forces, which were given the awkward name Funcinpec.The party’s name is an acronym for the French words “Front uni national pour un Cambodge indépendant, neutre, pacifique et coopératif,” which translates as National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful, Economic and Cooperative Cambodia.Funcinpec was transformed into a political party in 1993.Prince Ranariddh is survived by a daughter, Norodom Rattana Devi; four sons, Norodom Chakravudh, Norodom Sihariddh, Norodom Sutharidh and Norodom Ranavong; his half brother King Norodom Sihamoni; and several other half siblings. He divorced his previous wife, Norodom Marie, in 2010.Sun Narin More