Editorial | Articles about Cambodia | Khmer
PHNOM PENH Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen is taking a belated leap into the digital age in a bid to court young, urban voters as he tries to fend off unprecedented competition from the opposition after three decades in power.
The former Khmer Rouge soldier has started to enthusiastically embrace Facebook for the first time, coming round to the platform after almost losing a 2013 election when the opposition won a surge of support online.
The self-styled "strongman" has until recently denied using Facebook, but when an account bearing his name received its millionth "like" last month, he finally admitted it was his, coinciding with the government's moves to ramp-up its cyber presence.
"He uses his own messages to reach out to people and to answer questions people want to ask him," said government spokesmen Phay Siphan, when asked why Hun Sen started using Facebook.
Seventy percent of Cambodia's 15 million population are under 30 years of age, while nine million of its citizens use the Internet.
Hun Sen's Facebook, which how has 1.2 million "likes", carries images and videos of new infrastructure and credits him with Cambodia's speedy economic development.
Some of the 63-year-old's most recent activities were sharing links to what he says are his favourite TV shows, "Cambodian Idol" and "The Voice" - local spin-offs of hit U.S. talent contests.
In June, Sen's government held two mandatory classes for 400 heads of Phnom Penh schools, which included showing them how to get Facebook accounts and write supportive messages for the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP), according to people who attended the sessions.
Government spokesman Phay Siphan said the classes were part of a broader exercise to train civil servants across the country to use social media to improve lines of communication
PROMOTE AND PROTECT
Lesson materials obtained by Reuters included instructions on accessing and linking to social media accounts and websites of the CPP and its youth wing, while teachers were urged to try and defend the government from negative messages online.
"We must promote what's really happening, about what government has really done," said Huot Yary, head of the capital's education department, recalling instructions during the classes.
Political analysts say the CPP is trying to counter a swell of online criticism since the last election, when the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) carved off a chunk of CPP's house majority, winning 55 seats to CPP's 68, down from 90 before.
Part of the opposition's gains were due to rapid online courting of young, urban Cambodians angered by issues like forced evictions, low factory wages and state graft.
There are concerns, however, that the government's new social media focus is not just about using it, but controlling it. The creation of Internet laws and a cyber crime task force are being considered and some critics fear the real aim is to intimidate opponents and block-out dissent.
Independent political experts forecast the 2018 election to be the closest ever in Cambodia and say the CPP has realised the battleground will now be on social media.
"It is scrambling to enter the digital age and counter the active opposition presence online," said Sebastian Strangio, a journalist and author of the book, "Hun Sen's Cambodia".
Many in Cambodia's younger generation doubt though that the government's bulked up online presence will have much sway on their opinions.
"There are all sides of information available now already, and youths know a lot - we have education," said 21-year-old university student Kim Hong.
(Editing by Martin Petty and Rachel Armstrong)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Labels: CNRP, Facebook, hun sen, Prime Minister Hun Sen
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By Dennis P. Halpin
The trial of an opposition senator accused of “treason” by Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen opened October 2 with a denial of a request for bail based on medical considerations. Senator Hong Sok Hour became embroiled this summer in Phnom Penh’s boisterous map war over the exact lines of the Cambodia-Vietnam border. His continued incarceration has been condemned by Human Rights Watch, which stated on October 1 that “Cambodian authorities should end the prosecution of an opposition senator who has been wrongfully charged with forgery and incitement for posting online an inaccurate version of a 1979 Cambodian-Vietnam treaty.”
The border imbroglio accelerated after the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) voiced concerns that Hun Sen’s government, given its past close ties to Vietnam, was making territorial concessions detrimental to Cambodia. In August the CNRP turned over digital copies of a Cambodia-Vietnam border map purchased in France to Cambodia’s Royal Academy. The map had previously been posted by CNRP party leader Sam Rainsy on Facebook. The Phnom Penh Post reported on August 11 that Sok Touch, the director of the Royal Academy’s border research team, noted that his team was composed of neutral researchers “who want to put an end to this dispute about maps that politicians have used in verbal attacks.”
This very public dispute over borders has sent another Cambodian lawmaker to Washington to comb the files of the Library of Congress in search of the holy grail of Cambodian border maps, raised traditional fears of Vietnamese expansionism, and led to a breakdown of the political accommodation reached by the governing and opposition parties in the Cambodian parliament last year. Prime Minister Hun Sen even publicly appealed this summer for U.S. president Obama to provide the Cambodian government with a map agreed upon by both countries in 1985 and reaffirmed in 2005. “I’m not asking for the maps that the U.S. drew to enter Khmer land to bomb at the time – I ask for my maps only,” Hun Sen reportedly said sarcastically.
CNRP senator Hong Sok Hour, a reported border expert, was quoted on August 11 as predicting that maritime borders with Vietnam could be a “hot issue” in the future as well. The senator did not have to wait very long to prove the point that this is a sizzling political issue. Assuming that he had legislative immunity, Hong Sok Hour reportedly posted a section of a 1979 Cambodia-Vietnam border treaty on the internet. Cambodia’s authoritarian Prime Minister Hun Sen then termed this posting of a “fake” document “treasonous” in a public speech. The hapless senator discovered the worthlessness of his presumed immunity as he was arrested by armed police and taken away on August 15. The Cambodia Daily reported subsequently on September 18 that the Court of Appeal rejected Hong Sok Hour’s request for release based upon his immunity as a senator and ordered that he continue to be held, pending trial, on forgery and incitement charges.
The senator’s high-profile trial is but the most visible example of a human rights situation that is once again deteriorating in Cambodia. On August 20, a group of 12 international and human rights organizations sent a letter to the U.N. Human Rights Council urging it to support a resolution addressing “the deteriorating human rights situation in Cambodia,” noting further that “[i]n the run-up to local and national elections scheduled for 2017 and 2018, the Cambodian Government ... has taken steps to further restrict Cambodian citizens’ rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association and to limit the political opposition’s ability to meaningfully engage in policymaking.”
The U.S. congressional Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission issued a statement on August 18 further specifying the deteriorating human rights situation. The commission’s co-chairs noted, “[T]he Cambodian legislature recently adopted a Law on Associations and NGOs which falls significantly short of international human rights standards governing the right to freedom of association. The law, passed in spite of protests by hundreds of people and still subject to Constitutional Council review, would allow the Government to deny registration on ill-defined bases, including if the purpose and goal of the association is perceived to ‘endanger the security, stability and public order or jeopardize national security, national unity, culture, traditions, and customs of Cambodian national society.’” In seeking to curtail the rights of civil society, Hun Sen appears to be mimicking recent legislative measures taken by his Chinese patron, Xi Jinping.
In addition, the Lantos Commission noted that “eleven Cambodian opposition activists, known as the Freedom Park 11, were convicted and sentenced to between seven and twenty years’ imprisonment for participating or leading an ‘insurrection’, following a protest that turned violent on 15 July 2014. According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, which monitored the trial, there were irregularities such as the use of statements by witnesses not available for cross examination, and the absence of evidence that the defendants directly committed any acts of violence. An independent investigation by Human Rights Watch found no basis to the accusations. As the UNHCHR noted, the perception of governmental interference in this case undermines public trust in the Cambodian justice system.”
Not a pretty picture. But over two decades after the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) sought to make Cambodia the poster child for emerging democracies in the post-Cold War era, many of the fundamentals of Cambodian politics have not transitioned. As journalist Sebastian Strangio observed in his comprehensive work Hun Sen’s Cambodia, “[b]eneath these various guises Hun Sen ruled in the traditional Cambodian way, through a system of personal patronage in which money was passed upward in exchange for protection. This he married to a fierce ambition, a serrated political instinct, and a genuine ability to channel the hopes and fears of rural Cambodians. Hun Sen could be violent and unpredictable. He had little tolerance for dissent.”*
Hun Sen’s renewed policies of repression at home did not in any way stymie him in his efforts to project himself on the world stage as Southeast Asia’s longest-serving elected official. Speaking at the Sustainable Development Summit at U.N. Headquarters on September 26, Hun Sen unabashedly called on developed nations to fulfill their aid pledges to commit at least 0.07 percent of their annual income to foreign aid. He made this call even as hundreds of Cambodian-Americans protested outside against the “kleptocratic dictator’s” continued incarceration of political opposition leaders and environmental activists .
The Brookings Institution noted in 2008 that “during the last decade, total development assistance to Cambodia amounted to about US$5.5 billion.” Yet Hun Sen, as he recently proclaimed in New York, is not shy in asking for even more for a “kleptocratic” government that both lacks transparency in the distribution of international economic assistance and continues the imprisonment of political opponents as “traitors.” The 1992 UNTAC mandate, which included “aspects relating to human rights and the organization and conduct of free and fair general elections,” looks to be as elusive a goal as ever.
Dennis P. Halpin, a former Cambodia analysist for the Department of State, is a visiting scholar at the U.S.-Korea Institute (SAIS) and an adviser to the Poblete Analysis Group.
*Hun Sen’s Cambodia, Sebastian Strangio, p. xiii
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/10/on_trial_for_treason_for_an_online_posting_.html#ixzz3ntLEXfmx
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Labels: Facebook, Hong Sok Hour, hun sen, treason
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Sou Pisen, VOA Khmer
04 September 2015
PHNOM PENH—
For many young Cambodians, social media has become more than simply a way to communicate with friends, and is a major source of news about their country and the world. But while observers say such websites have increased awareness about political issues in recent years, users are having to learn to negotiate the pitfalls of false information and rumor.
Facebook is the most popular social network in the country, and Cambodians use the site to share news stories, or firsthand accounts of events. With the country’s traditional media often seen as lacking in impartiality and serious analysis, social media provides a welcome source for an increasingly information-hungry population.
“Since 2012, especially during the fifth election [in 2013], Facebook has been used in a dramatically different way, to share and discuss about social and political issues, and so on,” said Chak Sopheap, executive director at the Cambodian Center of Human Rights. “It’s unlike before, when they just used it for entertainment.”
Social media provides a platform for free expression, Chak Sopheap told VOA Khmer, adding a warning that since information on social media was largely people’s opinions, it may not always be true.
“It is not like information from professional media institutions, which require journalists to act ethically and professionally,” he said. “But Facebook users are just people that use it to express their ideas. Sometimes it might be right; sometimes it might be wrong.”
Ouk Kimseng, a spokesman for the Ministry of Information, told VOA Khmer that politicians and government officials, including those at ministerial level, were using social media to get messages out to the public and to the media.
“When journalists see their stance, they can then send [politicians] a message to their inbox to ask them questions,” he said.
However, Ouk Kimseng agreed that information on Facebook still needed to be verified.
“If we want to know whether the news someone posted is true or not, we should do some research on it,” he said. “Some believe [what they read on Facebook], but some do not. It is up to them.”
Facebook users told VOA Khmer that they do treat information on Facebook with some suspicion, and seek to verify news on professional media.
Kak Yutthavonn, a 22-year-old recent law graduate from the Royal University of Law and Economics (RULE), said that he primarily uses Facebook to communicate with friends and relative, but also gets some of his news from the site.
“There is small part of news that I get from Facebook, but I get a lot of news [media] institutions,” he said. “I receive news about traffic accidents by checking on Facebook, but many news articles about social issues are always exaggerated on social media.”
The rising use of Facebook to share information has seen a number of scandals arise among Cambodians, after unfounded rumors or theories quickly become accepted fact.
For example, in recent months some have alleged that a scourge of Chinese-made “plastic rice” had been dumped on the Cambodian market, leading many to believe the rice sold in markets was dangerous to health. Rumors have circulated that eggs, noodles and soy milk made with plastic or rubber have also been on sale.
Industry bodies and the government have sought to play down the rumors, but many have been convinced.
Dim Theng, deputy director of Cambodia Import Export Inspection and Fraud Repression Directorate, said that such rumors shared on Facebook “cannot be trusted.”
“No plastic rice has been traded in the Cambodian market,” he insisted, explaining that no plastic rice had been identified by his department’s laboratory. He added that Facebook users should be cautious when spreading unverified news online, since doing so may have legal ramifications.
Student Ngel Sovanarith, 22, also studying at RULE, said he is cautious about believing what he reads on Facebook.
“I have to check where the news comes from,” he said. “If it is just from users, I don’t trust it, because it will carry the biases of those users.”
Labels: Facebook, Social Media
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