The dictator-prime minister used his page to post a large amount of content, including explicit threats to the opposition, which the platform had decided to remove. Now it threatens to block access to this social network throughout the country. And as a means of communication for the elections next month, he is using the messaging application Telegram and TikTok, in which the controls are less strict.
Phnom Penh () – Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen deleted his Facebook account last night and today announced through his Telegram channel that he could block access to the platform throughout the country to prevent opposition politicians in the exile communicate with citizens. A decision that for the country’s political history may be less trivial than it seems.
The announcement comes after Meta decided to suspend Hun Sen’s profile for six months for posting a video in which the premier threatened to beat up political opponents. “I have decided to stop using Facebook, where I have more than 14 million followers. I have asked my assistant to delete my account immediately. And I will also inform the company to remove my name from Facebook,” the prime minister wrote. in the Telegram messaging application, where at least 855,000 people are subscribed to his channel. Among the reasons for his decision, he cited imitations of his profile, while a government spokesman justified using Telegram saying that it is more popular in Cambodia and offers better Khmer translations than Facebook.
In reality, the prime minister-dictator, in power for almost 40 years, wanted to anticipate the social media measures. It may seem like a trivial action, but as said journalist Ananth Baliga“For Hun Sen to delete his Facebook page means that some seven years of public records, documents and political history have been erased. If all his ministries were to delete their Facebook pages, more publicly accessible documents would be lost, with little chance of recovery.” from other sources.”
In January, Hun Sen had uploaded a lengthy video taking aim at critics of his party, the Cambodian People’s Party, which won every seat in Parliament in the last election and will not face any kind of competition in the polls. next month as a result of the disqualification of the main opposition party. The video had been reported to Meta, the company that owns Facebook, for inciting violence, and moderators determined that Hun Sen’s phrases effectively violated community standards. But they did not remove the video because, having been published by a head of state, they considered it relevant for informational purposes. A binding ruling from Meta’s review board later ruled that Facebook’s decision should be reviewed and the content removed, along with the prime minister’s Facebook and Instagram profiles.
Hun Sen had joined the social network in 2015 after one of his main opponents, Sam Rainsy, now in exile, successfully reached out to the younger constituency. Addressing those who had fled abroad, he wrote: “They are using Facebook to communicate, we could block it.” On his own page, the Prime Minister used to post a variety of content, such as family photos, political announcements, and advertisements to promote tourism. He now mostly uses Telegram and TikTok, where controls are less strict, to reach Cambodians with his messages, some of them of continued explicit repression.
