Cambodian cybercrime law sparks social media concerns

by Kate Bartlett

PHNOM PENH

Cambodians have taken to social media with a vengeance over the past year, many using networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to air political grievances in the wake of July’s contested national elections and ensuing mass street protests.

A new cybercrime law leaked earlier this month, however, is threatening to clamp down on such freedoms – analysts fearing that the government will use it to further curtail the country’s media.

Though only a small number of the population - around 3 million of the country's 14 million people - have Internet access, those who do have become increasingly politicized since the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) claimed that strongman Prime Minister Hun Sen’s long-ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) won the ballot through widespread fraud.

There is still a huge disparity of wealth among the population of Cambodia - one of the poorest nations in the Asia region. While the World Bank said earlier this year that the country's poverty rate had more than halved in the past ten years - with only two out of every ten Cambodians now defined as "poor" - the organization warned that the “near-poor” - those who live on less than US$2.30 a day - "remained vulnerable to [even the slightest] economic shocks." The country also has a nascent middle class, which has grown under Hun Sen's rule, as well as a wealthy elite.

Many Cambodians who use the Internet do so through their mobile phones, which can be purchased cheaply, and mobile phone subscribers surpassed 20 million in 2013, according to the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications - more than the country's entire population.

There are currently no restrictions on social networking sites in the country—though access to anti-government websites KI Media and Khmerization have been prohibited for some years. However, a draft of the country’s proposed cybercrime law has drawn criticism from human rights groups who worry it could be used to curtail speech freedoms online.

“This law could be very risky and put more pressure on freedom of expression,” Moeun Chhean Nariddh, director of the Cambodia Institute for Media Studies, told the Anadolu Agency this week.

“Because of the lack of neutrality in the press ... the general public, Cambodian voters, relied on social media like Facebook and YouTube to fill in the gaps of information” during last year’s election and its aftermath, she said.

The media in Cambodia is nearly entirely pro-government. All newspapers toe the government line, save two English-language dailies, while television channels laud praise on Hun Sen at any opportunity. According to Reporters Without Borders' annual World Press Freedom Index, the country ranked low, coming 144th out of 180 nations surveyed. Ahead of elections last year, the government briefly banned Khmer-language radio programs broadcast by Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and Radio France International, and just last month, police cracked down on a protest by supporters of independent radio station owner Mam Sonando who has repeatedly been denied a relay station and television license.

“I think the government is afraid of social media,” Nariddh told AA.

The leaked draft includes an article that stipulates that anyone publishing information online “deemed to be non-factual, which slanders or undermine[s] the integrity of any governmental agencies, ministries, not limited to departments, federal or local levels” could face punishment, according to The Cambodia Daily newspaper.

The draft also seeks to punish hackers and online fraudsters. This month, two alleged members of the Cambodian branch of international Hacker collective Anonymous were arrested for hacking various government websites.

The alleged hackers, two information technology students in their 20s who go by the online names Black Cyber and Zoro, had recently launched "Operation Cambodia Freedom" and "declared war" on the government in response to the police shooting of an innocent bystander during an opposition rally last year.

While the law makes no direct mention of social networking sites, it does state that people found to have shared content detrimental to Cambodia’s "integrity" or creating "instability" could be penalized.

According to the draft law, people found guilty of such offenses face fines of over US$1,000 and prison terms of between one and three years, reported the Cambodia Daily.

Approached by AA, Phay Siphan, a senior government spokesman, declined to comment on the draft law saying it had been leaked and was not official.

“Nothing’s happened yet,” he said.

He did however say that while there were positives and negatives regarding social media’s growing popularity among Cambodians, the government had no intention of banning such sites.

“We cannot block anything,” he told AA. “Let the social media [users] do what they like. [Let] them enjoy freedom of expression..." 

"But educate them to be responsible,” he added.

Leewood Phu, who advises the government on information technology, has expressed concern that the drafting of the cybercrime law lacked transparency. He says that civil society groups should have been involved.

“Everyone must have a say for [the law] to be effective,” he said. “In its current form the law lacked process. Once it’s enacted it could affect everyone ... it needs a democratic process.”

The popularity of social media among Cambodia’s mainly urban youth has not gone unnoticed by the country’s political establishment with the premier promising in a speech last year not to "ban Facebook," and opposition leader Sam Rainsy asking supporters to help his Facebook page garner more "likes" than Hun Sen’s.

Opposition MP-elect Mu Sochua regularly posts political comments on her Facebook page, as does the daughter of opposition leader Kem Sokha.

In government, Minister of Information Khieu Kanharith - who is in his sixties - is a prolific Facebooker, posting everything from general interest articles from the international press to status updates about his dinner. Occasionally he posts photographs of himself clad in his silk dressing gown lounging in bed with his dogs.

Even the country’s late monarch, former King Norodom Sihanouk, learned the addictive power of the Web, using his personal blog during his last years to post everything from rants about the bureaucracy at his French bank to heartfelt tributes to his dogs. He also enjoyed musings on cinema releases to thinly-veiled attacks on sometimes-nemesis Hun Sen.

Individuals or groups posting critical comments on social media have generally been left unhindered, however, earlier this year, a hairdresser who attacked a rival business on Facebook was the first person to be sentenced for defamation through social media and ordered to pay the victim damages of more than US$1,000.

Also this year, a teenage CNRP activist with a vibrant online presence - Thy Sovantha - received death threats on Facebook from an unidentified user, leading her to file a police complaint while last year, a 23-year-old man was briefly arrested after he claimed on Facebook that a military commander in his province was corrupt and an extortionist. He was released after he agreed to remove the offending post and apologize to the soldier. In a similar case, a schoolteacher was questioned after he complained on Facebook that police had confiscated his motorcycle in order to extort money from him. He was also released after promising to remove the comment.

englishnews@aa.com.tr