FACEBOOK MUST DEAL WITH CHALLENGE OF CAMBODIA’S BLOODY DICTATORSHIP

២២ មីនា ២០២២ / 22 March 2022

 

 

Over the last 12 months the traffic on my Facebook page has fallen sharply. Previously the number of viewers for a video often reached half a million, but this number has now been divided by 10, or even more, for most of my posts.  

As my page still has more than 5 million loyal followers, this sudden drop can have only two possible causes:

1) The Cambodian government in Phnom Penh, with the help of Chinese experts, has put in place tools to partly block my Facebook page, with the aim of reducing my social media influence as an opposition leader. We know that the Internet in Cambodia is narrowly controlled by the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen. He makes no secret of the fact that he wants to adopt the model of Communist China in controlling all forms of public communication and in particular social media. As communal elections approach in June 2022, followed by legislative elections in July 2023, the timing of such restrictions on the freedom of expression is perfect from the autocratic government’s point of view.

 

2) Large numbers of government agents have been deployed to send messages to Meta Platforms, the company which runs Facebook, to denounce my page. They send these messages under false names and claim that the content which criticises Mr Hun Sen is in breach of Facebook community standards. These messages from Mr Hun Sen’s supporters take the content of my page out of context. Of course they ignore the fact that Mr Hun Sen and his supporters are guilty of violence in word and deed. On March 17, a court controlled by Mr Hun Sen imposed a new prison sentence of 10 years on me on charges that Human Rights Watch describes as "baseless" and relative to a "witch hunt" against political opponents. (1)

This legal and political persecution backed by threats and attempts at assassination led me, as a dual national of Cambodia and France, to turn to French justice which is often mentioned in my statements. On December 30, 2021, a French court issued arrest warrants against killers acting under the orders of Mr Hun Sen. They missed me but killed 16 innocent people. Everything which I post on my Facebook page must be seen in the context of violent political repression in Cambodia. The content simply expresses a non-violent struggle against a bloody dictatorship as I have to face what Amnesty International denounces as a "relentless campaign of persecution against Cambodia’s political opposition." (2)
Sam Rainsy