Prime Minister Hun Sen dumps Facebook, makes loads of documents inaccessible
Cambodia’s strongman used to post a lot in his Facebook account, including explicit threats to the opposition. For this reason, the platform decided to suspend him. Now he threatens to ban the social media platform from the country. Ahead of next month’s election, Hun Sen has turned to Telegram and TikTok where monitoring is less stringent.
Phnom Penh (AsiaNews) – Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Facebook account was deleted yesterday while, his Telegram channel today carried a post, saying that he would block access to the platform in the country to stop exiled opposition politicians from communicating with Cambodians.
This may not be as trivial as it might seem at first glance. The issue began when Facebook’s owner, Meta Platforms, said that it would suspend Hun Sen's account for six months after he posted a video threatening to have opponents beaten.
As a result, “I have decided to stop using Facebook, on which I have more than 14 million followers. I have requested my assistant to delete my Facebook account immediately. And I will also inform the company to delete my name from Facebook," he wrote on Telegram where he has 855,000 subscribers.
Among the reasons that led him to this decision, the prime minister cited imitations of his profile, while a government spokesman justified the use of Telegram by saying that it is more popular in Cambodia and offers better translations from Khmer than Facebook.
In fact, Cambodia’s strongman, who has been in power for almost 40 years, sought to pre-empt Facebook’s move.
More importantly, although this may seem trivial, “Hun Sen deleting his Facebook page means around 7 years of public records, documents and political history was wiped out,” tweeted journalist Ananth Baliga.
“If all his ministries delete their Facebook pages, more publicly accessible documents will be lost, with little chance of retrieving them from other sources.”
Hun Sen posted a video filmed in January in which he targets critics of his party, the Cambodian People's Party, which won all seats in parliament in the last election and will not face any challenge in next month's vote since the main opposition party was banned.
After the video was flagged for inciting violence, Meta Platforms’ oversight board ruled that Hun Sen's remarks violated community standards.
The company's moderators determined that the remarks violated its community standards but left the video online because of its “newsworthiness”.
The oversight board later ruled that this decision was wrong and that the content should be taken down, a ruling that is binding. In view of this ,the board recommended that the prime minister’s Facebook and Instagram accounts be suspended.
Hun Sen joined the social media platform in 2015 after one of his main opponents, Sam Rainsy, now in exile, successfully used it to reach out to younger voters.
In a recent speech, Hun Sen warned his exiled opponents, “you are using Facebook for communications, we could block Facebook”.
Until he pulled out, the Cambodian leader used his Facebook account to post a wide variety of content, from family photos and tourism promotion to policy announcements.
Now, to reach Cambodians, sometimes with threatening messages, he is using mostly Telegram and TikTok, which are less stringently monitored.
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