In a Strongman State, a Trump Order Extinguishes Flickers of Freedom
Cambodia’s authoritarian dynasty had silenced almost all of the country’s independent media. The remaining few are facing extinction because of an executive directive from President Trump.
His father was marched to a forest and killed, like so many victims of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Before he was led away, the father told his young son, Uon Chhin, to stand up and speak the truth, even if it might compromise his liberty.
Decades later, Mr. Uon Chhin became a journalist during the muckraking heyday of the free press in Cambodia. But in 2017, he and a colleague at Radio Free Asia were charged with espionage. Their nine-month imprisonment presaged an evisceration of human rights in Cambodia by Hun Sen, the longtime leader who refashioned a young democracy into a dictatorial dynasty.
Now, the slashing of American foreign aid and President Trump’s executive order last month to gut American-funded news media like Radio Free Asia and Voice of America are erasing what little space for free speech remains in Cambodia. Thirty projects funded by the United States Agency for International Development have been canceled, including those supporting civil society and an independent media.
It is a tectonic shift in this Southeast Asian nation, which was once a laboratory for internationally mandated democracy-building in the post-Khmer Rouge era, then later devolved into a strongman state.
And it underscores the rise of another power, China, eager to influence a small country desperate for cash and for a model for developing its fast-growing economy.
Like China, Mr. Hun Sen celebrated Mr. Trump’s executive order targeting Radio Free Asia and Voice of America. Silencing these American-funded news organizations, he said, would be a “a major contribution to eliminating fake news, disinformation, lies, distortions, incitement, and chaos around the world.”