Cambodia's authoritarian dynasty has silenced nearly all of the country's independent media. The few that remain are on the brink of extinction under an executive directive from President Trump.
His father was taken into the forest and killed, like many other victims of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Before he was taken away, the father told his young son, Uon Chhin, to stand up and tell the truth, even if it meant jeopardizing his freedom.
Decades later, Mr. Uon Chhin became a journalist during the heyday of Cambodia’s free press. But in 2017, he and a colleague at Radio Free Asia were charged with espionage. Their nine-month prison sentences foreshadowed the erosion of human rights in Cambodia by Hun Sen, the longtime leader who transformed the young democracy into a dictatorial dynasty.
Now, cuts in U.S. foreign aid and President Trump’s order last month to gut U.S.-funded news outlets like Radio Free Asia and Voice of America are eroding what little space for free speech remains in Cambodia. Thirty projects funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development have been canceled, including some that supported civil society and independent media.
It is a tectonic shift in this Southeast Asian country that was once a laboratory for internationally sanctioned democracy in the post-Khmer Rouge era and then emerged as a strong state.
And it underscores the rise of another power, China, seeking to influence a small country desperate for money and a model to develop its fast-growing economy.
Like China, Mr Hun Sen welcomed Mr Trump’s order targeting Radio Free Asia and Voice of America. Banning the American-funded news organisations, he said, would be “an important contribution to eliminating fake news, disinformation, lies, distortions, incitement and chaos around the world”.
