The board’s recommendation called on Meta to suspend Hun Sen’s account for at least six months and remove a live-streamed video posted in January. In the video, Hun Sen, who has led Cambodia since 1985 and faces an election next month, told political opponents to choose between the “legal system” and “a bat.” Speaking in Khmer, he also threatened to “beat up” opponents, “send gangsters” to their homes and “arrest a traitor with sufficient evidence at midnight.”
Meta employees reviewed the video after complaints that it violated platform policies against inciting violence, but they decided to keep it online on grounds that it was newsworthy. The Oversight Board overturned that decision, citing “the severity of the violation, and what it said was Hun Sen’s history of committing human rights violations and intimidating political opponents, as well as his strategic use of social media to amplify such threats.” It also asked the company to update its policy on evaluating newsworthy content.
Although the call for Hun Sen’s suspension is nonbinding, Meta is required to remove the contested video. The company has 60 days to comply, and it must issue a public response in the same period. A spokesperson for Meta’s operations in Asia said the company would remove the video and was conducting a review of the board’s recommendations, including the suspension of Hun Sen’s accounts.
The takedown of Hun Sen’s account is “long overdue,” said Phil Robertson, the Asia deputy director of Human Rights Watch, which has documented the leader’s rising persecution of opposition figures. It also could set a precedent for how the platform regulates the behavior of other authoritarian leaders in Asia, such as the former president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, who critics say used Meta’s platform to fuel disinformation.
In 2021, a day after a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, Meta independently blocked President Donald Trump from using Facebook, citing his role in inciting the insurrection. The ban was lifted in January, after an internal company assessment.
Pamela San Martín, a member of the Oversight Board and a human rights lawyer in Mexico City, said the Cambodia decision has global resonance. “The message for different political leaders is clear: Meta’s platforms should not be used as a weapon,” she said in an interview.
Hun Sen, who at 70 is an active Facebook user with 14 million followers, appeared to preempt the ban by announcing Thursday that he would stop posting actively on the platform and would take his updates to Telegram, TikTok and YouTube. “This makes it easier to connect with citizens when I have to travel to any countries that cannot access Facebook,” he said on Telegram, a messaging app that grew in popularity in Cambodia during the pandemic.
Hun Sen launched his official Facebook page in 2015, after his party notched unexpected losses against an opposition group that used social media to mobilize support. He quickly transformed Facebook into his primary mode of public communication, political analysts said, posting videos from events and news conferences alongside photos of his grandchildren.
The Cambodian government has yet to respond to the board’s decision, but the prime minister has previously denied that his comments incited violence. Speaking to a local newspaper in April, Justice Ministry spokesman Chin Malin said Hun Sen’s remarks in January were “only a confirmation of the legal process of Cambodia.”
In evaluating the video, Meta’s Oversight Board concluded that the speech was only one piece of content in a longer campaign by Hun Sen to incite violence against his opponents. Retaining it “enables his threats to spread more broadly” and allowed the exploitation of the platform, the board wrote. “Such behavior should not be rewarded,” it added.
In previous posts, Hun Sen had said he was “willing to eliminate 100 or 200 people” to ensure peace, threatened civil war and warned that he would shoot opposition leader Sam Rainsy with a rocket launcher — all of which are breaches of Meta’s community standards, the board said. In December, content on Hun Sen’s page was removed for breaking Meta’s policy on inciting violence.
Meta previously said it kept Hun Sen’s speech because it was “not connected to an ongoing armed conflict or violent event.” The board asked it to update its policy beyond single incidents of civil unrest and apply it to contexts “where political expression is preemptively suppressed or responded to with violence or threats from the state.”
The International Commission of Jurists, which consulted with the board on the case, welcomed the decision, saying its recommendation to balance newsworthiness with violations of human rights was adopted. This “will help ensure more consistent and transparent applications of this ‘newsworthiness’ exception, which has been fraught with ambiguity and opacity,” said Daron Tan, ICJ associate international legal adviser.
Human rights and free speech are imperiled in Cambodia, where the main opposition party has been barred from participating in the upcoming elections. One of the last remaining independent news outlets, Voice of Democracy, was closed in February.
Hun Sen has focused on stamping out opposition in the lead-up to the election, which will pave the way for him and other senior members of the Cambodian People’s Party to hand over power to their children, said Chhengpor Aun, a visiting fellow specializing in Cambodia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “A clear election win, a safe parliament are very important for this transition.”
Hun Sen’s Facebook absence might free up space for his critics on the platform, but the opposition “would still have to contend with significant offline restrictions to their activities,” said Elina Noor, a senior fellow focusing on technology and Southeast Asia at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Apart from seeking action against Hun Sen, rights groups have urged platforms to take stricter action against hyperpartisan social media personalities in Cambodia.
Human Rights Watch called Thursday for a lifetime ban on influencer Pheng Vannak, who insulted a journalist this year and threatened to behead another this month. Vannak’s personal account was suspended, but he has since made a new one, and a public profile with over 680,000 followers remains active.
“The problem is, the Cambodia content review team appears to have been asleep at the switch until recently, failing to take action to prevent violent threats and incitement to violence in various cases,” said Robertson, of Human Rights Watch. “They need to get on the ball and do their jobs.”
Meta faces a rash of challenges in Southeast Asia amid companywide cuts, which former employees say have affected its ability to regulate content responsibly. The company has given in to recent censorship demands in Vietnam, according to rights groups. And Malaysia announced last week that it would take legal action against Meta for not removing “undesirable content” on sensitive issues such as race and religion, as well as scam advertisements.
Tan reported from Singapore. Sim Chansamnang in Phnom Penh contributed to this report.
