SOUTHEAST ASIA SOCIAL AND POLITICAL IDENTITY WITH FACEBOOK

4/3/2018 Why south-east Asia’s politics are proving a problem for Facebook
https://www.ft.com/content/9b84a5a4-33ff-11e8-a3ae-fd3fd4564aa6 1/10
John Reed in Bangkok and Hannah Kuchler in San Francisco 13 MINUTES AGO
The Philippines-based news website Rappler, launched in 2012, was an early and enthusiastic
adopter of Facebook’s “Instant Articles” service, which allowed it to speed up the loading of stories
for readers. By 2015 it had added video on Facebook too, and was reporting triple-digit readership
growth as millions of Filipinos began turning to the social media site as their main source of news.
Then, says Maria Ressa, Rappler’s chief executive, “Facebook ran into trouble”. In May 2016, six
months before Americans elected Donald Trump, Filipinos voted in their own populist president,
Rodrigo Duterte, who like his US counterpart relied heavily on social media in his campaign.
Supporters of the new president in Manila began using Facebook accounts to co-ordinate large
scale verbal attacks on opposition figures, journalists and activists who criticised his brutal
crackdown on drugs, which has killed more than 12,000 people since he was elected.
A Rappler investigation into suspicious Facebook activity found that just 26 pro-Duterte accounts,
many of them created in the run-up to the election and some of them fake, were being deployed to
influence millions of others. Freedom House, the civil liberties watchdog, and a University of Leeds
study subsequently claimed the president’s administration was using paid trolls, something it
denies. “I can assure you that there is no budgetary line item for payment of trolls in the social
media as far as his administration is concerned,” Harry Roque, Mr Duterte’s spokesman, said in
January.
The Big Read Facebook Inc
Why south-east Asia’s politics are proving a problem for Facebook
One of the company’s fastest-growing markets is also one of its most complex where hate speech and political manipulation
are making it hard to remain neutral

Ms Ressa — who began receiving frequent death and rape threats after Rappler’s critical coverage
of Mr Duterte — recalls meeting three of Facebook’s Asia-Pacific executives in Singapore in August
2016 and warning them of the platform’s potential for exploitation by populist groups and leaders
with authoritarian tendencies.
“If you don’t watch it, Trump may win,” she recalls saying. “We all laughed.”
Long before Christopher Wylie blew the whistle on how Cambridge Analytica had obtained
Facebook data, harvested from 50m people and allegedly used to target voters in the 2016 US
election, activists, journalists, and media analysts in south-east Asia were raising the alarm about
the weaponisation of the social media website as a tribune for authoritarian leaders and a powerful
vector for dangerous hate speech.

Living online: Many Filipinos access news via Facebook on their mobile phones © Getty
In the Philippines, Cambodia, and Myanmar, controversy is now building over Facebook’s outsize
influence as a forum for news and political discourse in countries where democratic governance
has traditionally been weak. With more than 300m monthly users — roughly half the population of
south-east Asia — the influence the platform wields is enormous.
“This is online state-sponsored hate in many countries,” Ms Ressa says. “South-east Asia is
extremely vulnerable; our institutions are so weak. They are using the platform to kill all kinds of
checks and balances on our government.”
In Myanmar, the platform has been used by extremist Buddhists to fan hatred of Muslims and
defend the military’s crackdown on minority Rohingyas in the western Rakhine state, which has
seen some 700,000 people driven from their homes and thousands killed.
In Cambodia, Hun Sen, prime minister since 1985, has used his page, which has 9.7m followers, as
a tool to bypass conventional media, using posts and “live” events to bolster his image as a man of
the people. He has done so even as his regime has shut down a critical newspaper and radio
stations and outlawed the main opposition party ahead of elections planned for July.

An opposition politician has taken Facebook to court in California seeking information on the account of Hun Sen, Cambodia's prime minister, above ©
AFP
Yet even critics acknowledge the site has done some good in Vietnam, for instance, where
dissidents have used it to promote their causes. Cambodian opposition politicians, who accuse Hun
Sen of exploiting Facebook to bolster his legitimacy, say it has been a force for good, as well as bad.
Mu Sochua, deputy head of the Cambodian National Rescue party, who fled the country after Hun
Sen’s crackdown, says the platform has “brought about change” and had an impact on democracy,
but has also been exploited by Hun Sen and his supporters to “create confusion, mistrust and
disruption”.
The company has been criticised most heavily for reacting late, and say critics, too slowly, to
complaints that in some south-east Asian countries delays amount to matters of life and death.
“At least in the US if they get upset, they can call Mark Zuckerberg to Congress to answer
questions; we can’t do this,” says Clarissa David, professor at the University of the Philippines’
College of Mass Communication. “Many countries around the world, long before the US, realised
this was a problem.”
Online audience

© Bloomberg
306m
Facebook users in south-east Asia as of January 2017
89%
Of them accessed the platform via mobile phone
Although it is questionable whether Facebook can, will, or indeed should be held accountable in a
court of law for undemocratic politicians and demagogues who exploit it, there is clearly
reputational risk to the company from the hateful discourse, propaganda and false news reports
shared on the platform.
The International Criminal Court recently opened a preliminary investigation into Mr Duterte’s
drugs war. The US and UN have called Myanmar’s violent expulsion of the Rohingya ethnic
cleansing.
“These are some of the fastest-growing nations in the world in terms of Facebook use,” says Phil
Robertson, deputy director for Asia with Human Rights Watch. “They [Facebook] have been
reaping the rewards of this massive expansion, without taking on any of the responsibilities of
doing anything until the pressure comes on.”
Recommended
Facebook is beginning to acknowledge the problem.

“We absolutely see that social media and Facebook amplify humans’ intent both good and bad,”
says Simon Milner, the company’s vice-president of policy in Asia-Pacific. “It can do good by
promoting democracy, human rights, reporting on events; there’s nothing quite like Facebook for
doing that at scale.
“There are also people who want to use our platform for bad: undermining democracy, spreading
false news and creating division,” adds Mr Milner, who recently testified before a Philippines
Senate hearing into fake news.
The criticism of Facebook in south-east Asia boils down to whether the platform is assisting
authoritarian leaders directly or indirectly, and also if the company is creating potential conflicts of
interest by entering infrastructure and other joint venture deals with the same administrations.
People use their mobile phones while visiting the tombs of dead relatives at Barangka cemetery in Marikina, east of Manila © AFP
“I don’t believe there’s an intent to be politically partisan, but Facebook ends up being a tool of
whichever party is in power because they work closely with government,” says Ms David, who
previously worked for the Philippines antitrust commission.
In November, Manila — which is seeking tens of billions of dollars of foreign investment to boost
economic growth — announced a partnership with Facebook to bring ultra high-speed broadband
internet infrastructure to Luzon, the country’s most populous island. Facebook says this deal, the
value of which has not been disclosed, pre-dates the Duterte administration.
Another criticism relates to the platform’s policing of hate speech and incitement to violence.
Social media activists argue it is devoting fewer resources to local-language staff in the region than
it does in countries such as Germany, which recently passed a law requiring media groups to
remove hate speech from their pages within a day. Facebook says it has about 1,200 of its 15,000
moderators based in Germany, but they review reports in multiple languages and countries from
outside Europe as well.

For tens of millions of people in the region, Facebook arrived at the same time mobile phones
and internet access did, and its news feed is the main place they get their information. In the
Philippines mobile phone providers bundle a free, low-data version of Facebook into their prepaid
packages, and people who might not have picked up a newspaper before now see news and blog
headlines in their feeds. In contrast, elsewhere in Asia, China has banned Facebook, and in India
the company backed off a “free basics” package after a local backlash.
Maria Ressa, left, chief executive of the news website Rappler, which has investigated the Duterte administration's use of Facebook in the Philippines ©
AFP
In Myanmar, Facebook suspended the widely followed page of Wirathu, a monk known for his
anti-Muslim jeremiads in January — 10 months after the country’s state-backed Sangha clerical
committee banned him from giving sermons for a year. Facebook says it suspends people if they
consistently share content promoting hate. But did not explain why it had waited so long given that
Wirathu was violating community rules.
The company has been quick to take down violent content in other parts of the world where there
has been closer scrutiny of its operations. Late last year it said its artificial intelligence was able to
remove 99 per cent of posts related to Islamist groups such as Isis or al-Qaeda within an hour.
However, social media analysts in Myanmar say that inflammatory posts in Burmese often remain
online for two days or more. The site does not have an office in Myanmar and has come under fire
for having too few reviewers who speak Burmese or the country’s minority languages.
“Facebook won’t share any data on its moderation effort in Myanmar, which makes it hard to
assess how successful its moderation is, how it has improved and how it compares to other
markets,” says Victoire Rio, a Yangon-based social media analyst. Facebook says it cannot disclose
the location of its staff devoted to south-east Asian countries, to protect individuals working on
sensitive topics.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and chief executive, on Monday insisted the company is
paying attention to events in Myanmar. “It’s a real issue,” he told Vox, “we want to make sure that
all of the tools that we’re bringing to bear on eliminating hate speech, inciting violence, and
basically protecting the integrity of civil discussions [in the US] that we’re doing [them] in places
like Myanmar as well”.
Across south-east Asia, Facebook is running “news literacy” programmes to encourage people to
question what they read. In Myanmar, the company has placed advertisements in newspapers and
on Facebook. In the Philippines, it has been working with journalists to help them defend
themselves from personal attacks.
The company says that it follows local laws, which it says is easy when it needs to remove content
inciting violence, but harder in cases where politicians ask it to take down posts.
“[With] political content we have to be much more careful,” Mr Milner says. “We often push back,
and we sometimes have to do that facing threats.”
Yet critics say its response so far has been inadequate when measured against its power in the
region.
“It comes down to whether Facebook is a public or a private platform,” says Ms David, the media
professor. She points to the blurring of the public and the private in the case of Esther Margaux
(“Mocha”) Uson, the former singer and dancer who the president named as his assistant secretary
for communications last year, and who uses her popular Facebook blog, with 5.6m followers, to
attack critics of the administration.
Mr Duterte remains popular with a large majority of Filipinos, and his opponents say that his
administration’s social media effort — dominated by Facebook, but also via other channels
including the Google-owned YouTube — is playing a crucial role in bolstering that popularity and
support, including in the key constituency of overseas workers.
Rappler, Ms Ressa’s website, is faring less well: facing a series of legal challenges from securities,
tax, and other authorities. Facebook is doing somewhat better: it puts its number of users in the
Philippines at 63m out of a population of 104m. In the recent senate “fake news” hearing the
company spoke of the work it was doing on ranking stories in its news feed and identifying false
reports. But Ms Ressa is sceptical that the company will tackle the bigger problems.
“If Facebook wanted to solve this they could, but doing it would curb growth,” she says. “Troll
armies have real engagement.”
Additional reporting by Grace Ramos in Manila

© AFP
Legal fight:
Cambodian politics shift to a California court
The fight over Facebook’s role in south-east Asian politics is not confined to the region: Sam
Rainsy, an exiled Cambodian opposition politician, is suing the company in California in a bid to
force it to divulge “critical information” on how Hun Sen, Cambodia’s long-serving prime minister,
uses Facebook, including information on whether he uses state funds to advertise on it.
The opposition politician’s lawyers are seeking information they say would help defend their client
in a separate defamation case brought by Hun Sen.
If allowed to proceed, the case could pry open information potentially embarrassing to Facebook
and ensnare it in the rough and tumble of Cambodian politics. Among the information Sam Rainsy
is seeking is confirmation of his claim that many of the prime minister’s 9m-plus followers are fake,
and were purchased from so-called “click farms”.
“Far from being a neutral actor, Facebook reaps millions of dollars in revenues through wartime
profiteering,” the opposition figure’s lawyers have claimed in their discovery request to Facebook,
filed in the US District Court in San Francisco. “It sells advertising to regimes that are using the
platform to commit human rights atrocities.”
The social media group’s lawyers are fighting the information request, which they describe as a
“fishing trip” and have called for it to be thrown out of court.
Facebook says: “Mr Sam Rainsy’s application makes allegations about Facebook and seeks far-
reaching discovery from the company about the Cambodian prime minister’s activities on the
platform, but he hasn’t taken necessary steps under federal law to support his requests.”
The next court hearing is planned for April 30.

4/3/2018 Facebook is the internet for many people in south-east Asia
https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/facebook-is-the-internet-for-many-people-in-south-east-asia-20180322-p4z5nu.html 1/10
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WORLD ASIA POLITICS
Facebook is the internet for many people in
south-east Asia
Jakarta: For millions of people across
south-east Asia, their smart phone and
Facebook are their only interaction with
the people who govern them and shape
their society.
And that is unlikely to change any time soon, according to Australian
National University lecturer Ross Tapsell, even as the social media
giant's reputation and share price take a battering over the alleged
improper use of Facebook data by Cambridge Analytica.
0
By James Massola
22 March 2018 — 5:14pm
A A
AView all comments2
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While Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg has admitted his
company's mistakes, and as authorities in Australia, the United States and
elsewhere investigate, Dr Tapsell says countries in south-east Asia are yet
to have a debate about social media and privacy.
His recent book, Media Power in Indonesia: Oligarchs, Citizens and the
Digital Revolution, notes there were 64 million Indonesians with a
Facebook account in 2015. Twenty million have a Twitter account. The
penetration of both platforms in a region where smart phones are cheap
and accessible is among the highest in the world.
"For a lot of people, Facebook is the internet in south-east Asia," Dr
Tapsell says, adding that political parties in Indonesia and throughout the
region are using Facebook to mobilise voters and organise rallies.
Customers on their phones at a cafe in Jakarta.
Photo: Bloomberg

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"There are big data companies in south-east Asia who are scraping
people’s details, mobile phone numbers and so forth, and who then use
that information to try swing votes. Data is easily accessible ... a lot of it
can be bought.
"The Cambridge Analytica case has highlighted where we think the line
should be drawn on privacy and social media. South-east Asia is yet to
have that debate, maybe this will spark it. There are certainly other
companies that are looking to do similar things, if not identical things, to
what Cambridge Analytica has done."
On its website, Cambridge
Analytica boasts of having
worked in Thailand to determine
Thai voter behaviour, though it
offers few speciﬁcs, and obliquely
refers to managing an election
campaign for one of Indonesia’s
major political parties at some
point after 1999.
More signiﬁcantly, it claims to
have run a "targeted messaging
campaign" in Malaysia's Kedah
State for Barisan Nasional, the
party of Prime Minister Najib Razak, that helped the party win the state in
the 2013 election.
A picture of Mr Razak is featured on the company's website. The
suggestion of Cambridge Analytica's involvement – against the backdrop
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of a national election expected as soon as April – has dominated
headlines in Malaysia in recent days.
But the office of Mr Razak has denied that either Cambridge Analytica or
its parent company SCL Group "have ever – now or in the past – been
contracted, employed or paid in any way by Barisan Nasional, the Prime
Minister's Office or any part of the Government of Malaysia".
Instead they accuse Mukhriz Mahathir, the son of former prime minister
turned opposition leader Mahatir Mohammad - who was then with
Barisan Nasional but is now in opposition – of working with the firm in
2013.
In Cambodia, where strongman Prime Minister Hun Sen has arrested
leading opposition politicians, cracked down on civil society groups and
ramped up pressure on traditional media outlets, Facebook has become a
primary sources of news for many people.
Indonesian president Joko Widodo and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.
Photo: Wires

For example, news of the recent death of two men, one of whom was an
Australian, after a landmine exploded, was posted to Facebook within
hours by Vannak Pheng, a major in the Cambodian military.
Pheng has 194,092 followers on his
personal page and uploaded
chilling pictures of the men injured
in the incident, as well as a picture
of one of the dead bodies covered
by a sheet.
The post serves as another example
of Facebook as a source of news.
Mu Sochua, the exiled deputy
leader of the Cambodian
opposition, says 70 per cent of
Cambodia's voters are under the
age of 30, and virtually all of them
are on Facebook. Before Hun Sen's
2017 crackdown, the opposition
relied on the platform to organise
protests.
"In every country I go to, we talk
only about Facebook. Every
Cambodian is connected to news at
home by Facebook. It could come to the point where Hun Sen tries to shut
it down as he is already targeting social media, people who used to be
active, now, they don’t comment.
with Reuters
Cambodian Army Major Vannak Pheng on
the men killed in a landmine explosion.
Photo: Supplied
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James Massola
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4/3/2018 Is Facebook putting profit before freedom in Southeast Asia? | Asia Times
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     SOUTHEAST ASIA | Is Facebook putting profit before freedom in Southeast Asia?

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hese are profitable yet testing times for Facebook in
Southeast Asia, the US-based social media giant’s fastest
growing business advertising market worldwide.
On April 25, Thai national Wuttisan Wongtalay live-streamed videos of
himself murdering his 11-month-old daughter before committing
suicide off-camera. The two videos remained on Facebook for almost
24 hours and were watched by half a million people before they were
taken down by the company.
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The next day, Facebook’s head of Global Policy Management, Monika
Bickert, met with officials from Vietnam’s information and
communication ministry to discuss ways of removing content that
violates the country’s laws.
Vietnamese law considers
“propagandizing” against
the state, including over
social media, a criminal
offense punishable by 20-
year prison sentences.
Authorities have arrested
and sentenced to long prison
sentences other activists
and bloggers under the
penal code’s Article 258, which criminalizes “abusing democratic
freedoms” to infringe on the interests of the state. Most independent
bloggers in Vietnam, more commonly known as ‘Facebookers’, use
Facebook as their platform of choice.
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An internet user browses through the Vietnamese government’s new Facebook page in Hanoi
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In February, Hanoi complained about what it referred to as “toxic”
anti-government entries posted on Facebook and called on local and
foreign companies to withdraw advertising from the site until they
were taken down. (Multinationals Ford, Unilever and Yamaha Motor
agreed to pull their ads from video-sharing site YouTube, according to
news reports.)
Vietnam said after the April 26 meeting that Facebook agreed to
cooperate with its censorship requests and would “prioritize requests
from the ministry and other competent authorities in the country” to
remove objectionable content, according to the statement.
The state-run Vietnam News Agency reported that “[Facebook] is also
ready to help state agencies [to] know how to use Facebook to
effectively disseminate the Party and state’s policies to the public.”
Facebook could not be reached for comment on either statement.
But as Facebook grapples with how to respond globally to content like
Wuttisan’s video, free-speech activists warn that repressive regional
governments are seeking to extend the definition of “inappropriate”
and “objectionable” material to include anti-government criticism.
Last year, Facebook launched what it referred to as an intiative for
“civil courage online” in an effort to curb hate speech online. But the
company has come under fire for what has been perceived as selective
censorship for taking down posts that offend certain political
constituencies, particularly on immigration debates, while leaving up
others.
Facebook is not the only multinational media company that risks
running afoul of what certain Southeast Asian governments deem
inappropriate. Indonesia’s largest Internet service provider, state-
owned Telekom Indonesia, blocked access to Netflix over concerns
that violent and adult content might violate the predominantly-
Muslim country’s strict laws on moral decency.
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As Internet penetration rates rise exponentially across Southeast Asia,
so too are market opportunities. In 2016, the number of Internet users
rose by more than 30% across the region. Almost half of the region’s
population is now thought to be active online. In most Southeast Asian
countries Facebook dominates the social media market.
As of January this year, the number of monthly active Facebook users
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While a chit-chat entertainment tool for many users, in more heavily
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official suppression of free speech.
That’s particularly true in countries like Thailand and Vietnam, both
ruled by repressive authoritarian regimes. Days after tanks rolled
through Bangkok in May 2014 to enforce a democracy-suspending
military coup, the country’s soldier-seized information technology
ministry temporarily blocked Facebook to dissuade anti-junta rallies.
Facebook has since obliged junta requests to remove content deemed
as offensive to the Thai royal family, a criminal offense under strict
lese majeste laws that allow for 15-year prison terms. A growing
number of Thais now languish in prison for their anti-royal social
media activities.
In June 2014, after communal riots broke out in the Myanmar central
city of Mandalay, Myanmar’s government blocked Facebook for
several days. The Malaysian government announced in 2014 that it was
investigating ways to block Facebook pages, though the
communication and multimedia minister commented at the time that
the move would be “radical and quite impossible.”
Only China, Iran and North Korea maintain complete blocks on
Facebook. Most countries, meanwhile, lack the technology to enforce
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Harit Mahaton (C) and Natthika Worathaiyawich (L), two of eight Thai activists who were jailed
after posting perceived as anti-royal comments on Facebook on May 11, 2016. Photo: Reuters/Athit
Perawongmetha
Vietnamese protesters demonstrate against Taiwanese conglomerate Formosa during a rally in
downtown Hanoi on May 1, 2016. Photo: AFP/Hoang Dinh Nam
such a block without unplugging the internet altogether. Southeast
Asian states typically prosecute netizens under cybercrime or anti-
state laws for social media content deem by authorities as
objectionable.
Yet Facebook remains a powerful democratizing tool. When Vietnam
temporarily blocked Facebook in May 2016 after protests spread
across the country over a toxic industrial spill that polluted coastal
areas, many Vietnamese netizens used proxy services and virtual
private network (VPN) systems to circumvent the government’s block.
Facebook was thus still used to mobilize unprecedented protests
against the environmental disaster and Hanoi’s perceived as lacking
response.
Free speech and pro-democracy activists worry that as Southeast Asia
becomes more financially important to Facebook, the social media
giant is starting to bend to the will of repressive governments to
maintain and grow its lucrative market positions.
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(Khalid Ibn Muneer)
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A man holds an iPad with a Facebook application in an office building at the Pudong financial
district in Shanghai, September 25, 2013. Image: Reuters/Carlos Barria
   
Facebook has quickly expanded its regional operations and corporate
presence. Repressive Singapore serves as Facebook’s Asia-Pacific
headquarters for operations. The company opened corporate offices in
Indonesia in 2014, in Thailand in 2015, and in Malaysia and the
Philippines last year.
Southeast Asia is also one of the world’s fastest growing markets for
business advertising on social media generally, an important part of
publicly listed Facebook’s profit strategy. In the third quarter of 2016,
Facebook’s advertising revenue rose by 59% year on year, with net
income surging from US$896 million to US$2.38 billion over the
period.
Last year it was reported that Facebook has been quietly developing
software that would allow third-parties to censor posts from
appearing in news feeds in specific geographic areas, a move critics say
is patently designed to placate the Chinese government. China, the
world’s largest social media market, has blocked Facebook since 2009.
Mark Zuckerberg, the social media company’s co-founder and chief
executive, is known to have courted senior Chinese officials in recent
years, including a meeting with president Xi Jinping in September
2015. It remains unclear, however, the software’s stage of development
and whether it will be offered to Beijing in exchange for market access.
Should it be successfully developed and granted to China, free speech
advocates fear other Asian governments will also demand access to the
censorship tool. That would potentially allow Facebook to distance
itself from the censorship process while providing information
ministries with greater capacities to suppress Facebook content they
deem as unfit for public circulation.
#SOUTHEAST ASIA #TECHNOLOGY #FACEBOOK #VIETNAM #THAILAND
#CENSORSHIP #BUSINESS ADVERTISING

4/3/2018 Southeast Asian cyberspace: politics, censorship, polarisation - New Mandala
http://www.newmandala.org/southeast-asian-cyberspace-politics-censorship-polarisation/ 1/8
Southeast Asian cyberspace: politics,
censorship, polarisation
AIM SINPENG - 01 NOV, 2017
On 12 April 2017, Thailand’s Ministry of Digital Economy and Society issued what
the Bangkok Post called “a strange government directive”. It prohibited anyone
from following, communicating with, or disseminating information online from
three outspoken critics of the government—or risk up to 15 years in prison. The
statement seemingly appeared out of nowhere, and without any explanation. Does
the act of “following” include reading these authors’ posts, or actually clicking the
“follow” button on their pro le? This was never clari ed by the government.
The ambiguity of the Thai cyber laws prompted a local online newspaper,
Prachatai, to publish information warning readers about how to avoid being
charged with Thailand’s draconian Article 112, which prohibits defamation against
the royal family. But the journalist responsible for the article was in turn
interrogated by the Thai authorities for a possible computer crime herself. This
deadly dose of opaque cyber regulations and an authoritarian political regime has
made Thailand’s cyberspace one of the most restricted in Asia.
This combination, however, is growing more and more representative of the
regional norm. In Southeast Asia, the liberating effects of the internet coexist in
increasing tension with state anxiety about information control. Southeast Asian
cyberspace is thus becoming more expansive, yet more restricted. On the one
hand, the number of people who have come online for the rst time has exploded:
Myanmar, for example, went from 1% internet penetration in 2012 to 26% in 2017
thanks to an abundance of cheap mobile phones. Internet users across the region
are increasingly spending time online to work, study, connect with friends, and
participate in civic and political life.
On the other hand, Southeast Asian governments are growing wary of the
potential for the internet to threaten political stability. Cyberspace in Southeast
Asia has evolved into a space for contestation over power and control between the
state and its societal opponents, with the former exerting greater and more
sophisticated control over the latter. As electoral contestation increases in some
countries, feuding elites have sought to win the hearts and minds of the ever more

engaged and wired citizenry through old tactics of divide and conquer, exploiting
deep-seated ethnic, religious and racial cleavages. Social networking sites like
Facebook have made it all too easy to spread hate speech and misinformation—
further entrenching divisions in society, and inviting yet more state-led censorship.
More internet, more censorship
Viewed globally, the Southeast Asian experience is not an aberration. Freedom
House’s Net Freedom Report, which ranks the degree of cyber openness around
the world, has recorded the sixth consecutive year of global decline in internet
freedom. More than two thirds of the world’s population live in countries where
criticism of governments gets censored.
The present reality stands in stark contrast to early optimism about the positive,
liberating role the internet could play in bringing about political change in
authoritarian regimes—a sentiment which ourished following the “Arab Spring”.
The utopian idea that social media could spell the end of despots has now been
muted by users’ frustration with increasing crackdowns on the internet and the
chilling effect brought on by continued persecution of politically active social
media users. Indeed, in 2016 a total of 24 countries restricted access to popular
social media platforms and messaging apps—an increase of 60% compared to the
previous year. 27% of internet users live in countries whose authorities have made
arrests based on social media posts.
So where does Southeast Asia t in this global picture? Despite varying degrees of
internet penetration—ranging from 19% in Cambodia to 82% in Singapore—
national internet environments in Southeast Asia share three key similarities.
First, there is an overall consecutive decline in internet freedom, which measures
the degree to which access is unrestricted. The Philippines stands as the only
country in the region that receives a score of “free” according to Freedom House
(Figure 1). The rest of Southeast Asian internet users enjoy partial to little freedom
in sur ng the net.
Figure 1: Net Freedom Scores, 2016

Source: Freedom House, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/freedom-net-2016
In all the “partly free” and “not free” states, ordinary internet users have been
arrested for their online activities and user rights have been repeatedly violated.
Measures to censor critical opinions about authorities can include blocking of
websites, content removal, and in some cases arrests and persecution—the latter
of which has been taking place more recently, as authorities across the region pay
closer attention to social media and chat app content.
Vietnamese blogger Nguyen Ngoch Nhu or “Mother Mushroom” was sentenced to
10 years in prison in 2017 for “conducting propaganda against the state”, after she
wrote on issues relating to policy brutality, land rights, and freedom of speech. A
Thai man has been sentenced to 35 years in prison for Facebook posts the
authorities deemed critical of the royal family. This follows the 2016 arrest of eight
internet users who ran a satirical Facebook page mocking Prime Minister Prayuth
Chan-Ocha. In Singapore, whose leaders prefer slapping lawsuits upon critics over
arresting them, blogger Roy Ngerng was sued for defaming Prime Minister Lee
Hsien Loong in posts on his blog. Even a democratic government in Indonesia has

sought to censor same-sex emojis from messaging apps and has banned several
gay dating apps.
Second, many Southeast Asian states have in recent years sought to
institutionalise online information controls through new laws and regulations,
typically citing concerns for national security. Myanmar’s 2013
Telecommunications Law openly permits criminalisation of internet activism or
communication that are considered “dishonest” and “untruthful” by the regime.
Cambodia has had several drafts of the cybercrime law, with each one eliciting
grave concerns from rights groups. Article 35 from the 2012 draft, for instance,
would criminalise civil society organisations deemed to endanger the security,
morality and values of the nation. A 2017 amendment to Thailand’s Computer-
Related Crime Act worsened an already repressive internet law by giving
authorities wide-ranging powers to arrest anyone who might be spreading
information that would be against the (vaguely-de ned) national interest.
Indonesia’s newly amended Electronic Information Transactions Law (UU ITE) was
criticised by internet rights groups for creating chilling effects online and curbing
of freedom of expression. Indeed, the majority of cyber laws in the region are
written in vague terms on purpose: they give power to authorities to interpret
what is critical to the nation’s security and public safety.
Third, the varying degree of ltering on issues of social, political, and national
security importance gives some indication of the country’s priorities on internet
control. Censorship is most severe when it comes to criticism against the state
(Figure 2). While the growth of internet usage across Southeast Asia caused
concern about information control among all of the region’s governments, reasons
for such concern vary. Indonesia and Thailand focus their internet censorship
efforts on social issues—particularly online pornography—whereas Malaysia,
Vietnam, Myanmar (and to some extent Thailand too) have gone to some lengths
to crack down on cyber dissidents deemed a threat to regime stability.
Figure 2: Key internet censorship issues, 2016

Source: Adapted from the 2016 Net Freedom report, Freedom House
Highly developed Singapore, with its hegemonic party rule, has one of the world’s
highest internet penetration rates. Instead of practicing cyber surveillance and
ltering, its leaders prefer to rely on non-technological means to curb online
commentary perceived to be a threat to social values and religious and ethnic
harmony. These “second generation” control mechanisms—such as lawsuits, steep
nes, and criminal prosecution—act to deter “inappropriate” online behaviour.
Divide the people, conquer the discourse

But political elites, even if they could, would not want to control the ow of all
information. They need the web to be suf ciently open to allow a perceived sense
of online freedom of expression, and the proliferation of engaged online
discussion. This provides ruling and competing elites alike with opportunities to
divide electorates and mobilise their support base against their adversaries. The
Oxford Internet Institute’s research on computation propaganda has highlighted
how state-sponsored “cyber troops” and trolls are commonplace around the world
as means of manipulating public opinion, particularly in support of ruling elites.
The Philippines—the only country whose internet environment is regarded as free
—has witnessed a high density of “cyber troops” since populist maverick Rodrigo
Duterte came to power. Duterte’s online army is reportedly paid to ood Facebook
with pro-Duterte propaganda, sometimes masking as grassroots activists.
Cambodia’s Hun Sen, who has a huge social media following, found himself
denying buying in uence on Facebook after reports that only 20% of his 3 million
likes originated from Cambodia (the rest largely being from India and the
Philippines). That a septuagenarian former Khmer Rouge leader, who has been in
power since the 1980s, felt the need to pay for Facebook likes is telling of the
extent political leaders go to in order to construct digital legitimacy, even if it
means spreading online propaganda.
But the most prominent example of the potential power of the abovementioned
“divide and conquer” strategy was the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election. After
ex-governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama or “Ahok” made controversial comments
about the Quran, anti-Ahok rallies, mobilising over 500,000 protesters at their
peak, were led by a coalition of Islamic groups. These religious groups were long
unhappy with Ahok in power but did not surge in popularity until Ahok’s
blasphemy case came to the fore (Figure 3).
Figure 3: FPI Facebook fan change (October 2016 to August 2017)

Source: author analysis
The hard line Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) more than tripled their support base on
Facebook following Ahok’s comments, and gured prominently in the months-long
campaign against him. Witnessing the rise of the FPI and other Islamist groups
gaining prominence as anti-Ahok movement garnered force, Ahok’s opponent
Anies Baswedan, long seen as a secular Islamic politician, shifted gear to appeal to
those sympathetic to the FPI campaign. The online sphere became deeply
polarised: a network analysis of those who commented on Ahok’s and Anies’
Facebook posts in the month of December in 2016 (Figure 6) shows that only 16
people cross-commented on both pages out of a total of 9,000 comments.
Figure 6: Network Visualisation of Commenters on Ahok’s (Blue) and Anies
Baswedan’s (Red) Facebook Page

Source: author analysis. Data are drawn from the period from December 1
to 31, 2016
Here, Facebook played an important role in catapulting the hard line FPI into
mainstream politics. This then contributed to a more polarising political
environment in which more Indonesians were politically active online than ever
before, but not necessarily engaging with opposing views.
Confronting the challenge to a free internet
Digital rights and digital literacy are the biggest challenges to Internet users in
Southeast Asia now and going forward. While global trends suggest that the
increasing tide of state surveillance, monitoring and censorship online will not
dissipate, Internet users must build greater resilience to protect and defend basic
human rights in the digital world, including freedom of expression, freedom of
association and privacy.
Civil society groups, bloggers, human rights advocates, students, journalists, and
academics should band together to build the technical and legal capacity needed
to defend internet rights within the region against the growth of government
surveillance, as well as corporations seeking to capitalise on the plethora of
personal information online. Public awareness about digital rights and their
importance to a vibrant democratic society is crucial to building digital resilience.
• • • • • • • •
This post appears as part of the Regional Learning Hub, a New Mandalaseries on
the challenges facing civil society in Southeast Asia supported by the TIFA
Foundation.

4/3/2018 Freedom of speech takes a drubbing in Southeast Asia- Nikkei Asian Review
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/Policy-Politics/Freedom-of-speech-takes-a-drubbing-in-Southeast-Asia 1/4
Politics & Economy > Policy & Politics
January 2, 2018 9:00 pm JST
Freedom of speech takes a drubbing in
Southeast Asia
Backsliding by Myanmar, media crackdowns elsewhere alarm local,
global critics
YUICHI NITTA and YUKAKO ONO, Nikkei staff writers
Reporters hold a protest on June 30 calling on the Myanmar government and military authorities to
release reporters who were arrested in Yangon. © Reuters
YANGON/BANGKOK -- Southeast Asia has, in recent decades, enjoyed
increasing democratization along with economic growth. But there has been
significant backsliding of late on free speech rights in the region.
Two reporters working for the Reuters news agency have been arrested in
Myanmar while covering the Rohingya refugee crisis. In Cambodia, one radio
network's bureau and a newspaper have been shut down. Authorities in
Singapore and Thailand are also tightening the screws on media.
These moves may keep a lid on dissent in the short term, but they risk storing
up trouble for later by aggravating social divisions in these countries.
Hush, hush
"What's going on reminds me of the days of the military rule," said one
dismayed journalist in Myanmar with 20 years of experience in reference to
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the arrest of the Reuters reporters. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were invited
to dinner on Dec. 12 by a source inside the police. The pair had planned to
interview their source, but instead they sent a text message with the words: "I
have been arrested." They have been held incommunicado for two weeks.
About 24 hours after their detention, the Ministry of Information announced
on Facebook that the reporters had been arrested "in possession of important
security documents obtained from the police." Photos of the reporters in
handcuffs were posted along with the announcement.
As Myanmar democratized and moved toward civilian rule half a decade ago,
the government eased restrictions on the media. In 2012, it began allowing
private publishers to produce daily newspapers and let foreign news
organizations open bureaus in the country.
But under the government formed in 2016 and effectively led by Aung San
Suu Kyi, a string of politicians have sued journalists and media outlets for
libel on internet. After these moves drew criticism, the law was revised in
August. But the arrest of the Reuters reporters highlights the authorities'
suspicion toward independent media and their obsession with secrecy.
The reporters allegedly had a
map of the security posts
attacked on Aug. 25 by the
Arakan Rohingya Salvation
Army, a Rohingya militant
group, as well as internal
documents which requested
additional weapons. The two
are likely to be accused of
Reuters reporters Wa Lone, left, and Kyaw Soe Oo were arrested in Myanmar while working on a
story about the Rohingya refugee crisis. © Reuters
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planned in advance, implying
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https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/Policy-Politics/Freedom-of-speech-takes-a-drubbing-in-Southeast-Asia?page=2 1/5
Politics & Economy > Policy & Politics
January 2, 2018 9:00 pm JST
Freedom of speech takes a drubbing in
Southeast Asia
Backsliding by Myanmar, media crackdowns elsewhere alarm local,
global critics
YUICHI NITTA and YUKAKO ONO, Nikkei staff writers
Myanmar court on Dec. 27 remanded two reporters for two more weeks.
The Myanmar government has tightened controls on foreign media since
November, as the Rohingya problem grew more acute, and the country has
come in for international criticism. In response, authorities are scrutinizing
foreign journalists more closely. The government has officially designated the
Rohingya militants as terrorists, warning readers of state-run newspapers
that expressions of support for terrorist organizations are banned.
Crackdown in Cambodia, squeeze in Singapore
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Journalists work in the newsroom of The Cambodia Daily newspaper, which was later forced to
close, in Phnom Penh on Sept. 3. © Reuters
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Myanmar is not the only country in Southeast Asia pressuring the media. In
Cambodia, the Cambodia Daily, a local English-language newspaper, closed
up shop in September after 24 years in operation. U.S.-affiliated Radio Free
Asia was also forced to close its Phnom Penh bureau. Cambodian Prime
Minister Hun Sen's government made demands of both, including payment
of huge "taxes."
The government is increasingly intolerant of anyone who opposes it. The
leader of the main opposition party was arrested on treason charges. In a
statement released Sept. 12, Libby Liu, president of Radio Free Asia, said: "It
has become increasingly apparent that Prime Minister Hun Sen has no
intention of allowing free media to continue operating inside the country
ahead of the 2018 elections."
Singapore, a symbol of Southeast Asia's growing prosperity, fits this grim
authoritarian pattern. A closely watched trial is expected to open early in
2018. Li Shengwu, a nephew of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, has been
charged with contempt of court -- critics say for his criticism of the
government.
Li's complaint on Facebook in
July that the Singapore
authorities are overly litigious
and that the courts are pliant
in the face of government
pressure is being treated as
contempt by prosecutors.
A month earlier a brotherly
feud broke into the open
between the prime minister
and Lee Hsien Yang, Li
Shengwu's father, regarding
the final wishes of their late
father, Lee Kuan Yew,
Singapore's founding prime
minister.
Contempt of court charges
targeting prominent lawyers,
bloggers and activists are not
rare in Singapore. The
accusations against Li Shengwu, who has opposed the prime minister,
highlighted the city-state's limits on freedom of speech.
Tough talking Thais
Li Shengwu, nephew of Singapore's Prime Minister
Lee Hsien Loong, who faces contempt charges in
his homeland, is pictured here at Harvard
University in the U.S. state of Massachusetts on
Aug. 12. © Reuters
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central Tokyo prices
Japan manufacturer sentiment worsens for
first time in 8 quarters
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subculture, feasts for otaku
Japan embraces competitive
esports
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watches
more
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Apr.3 13:00 Developing countries fail to shine
in green energy
Apr.3 13:00 Why south-east Asia’s politics
are proving a problem for Facebook
Apr.3 13:00 America’s new digital cold war
with China
Apr.3 13:00 Russia’s $55bn pipeline gamble
on China’s demand for gas

Thailand is another place where one can get in trouble for using social media
to criticize the government -- in this case a military junta.
Online censorship has been stepped up, with people sent to jail for posting
articles about the military or the monarchy, or for merely sharing them.
According to iLaw, a civic group that monitors the legislative process in
Thailand, more than 60 people in 26 separate cases have been charged with
sedition for activism, social media posts or simple criticism.
Recently, a former deputy spokeswoman for the Pheu Thai Party, which
backs exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, was charged with
sedition over Facebook posts that attacked the government. One of the posts
criticized former Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha, the country's prime minister, for
refusing to meet with protesters opposed to a planned coal plant, but taking
time out for a photo-op with a rock star. Other posts accused him of secretly
negotiating arms deals with the U.S.
Earlier this year, the Thai authorities asked Facebook to "respect the sacred
laws of Thailand," and to remove several thousand posts the junta deemed
illegal, such as alleged violations of the country's lese-majeste law. It even
threatened to halt sales operations of Facebook in Thailand. Facebook
reportedly requested legal information on each case. By August, Facebook
had deleted half the posts at issue. The dispute abruptly came to an end after
the government declared it was "satisfied with the cooperation" from
Facebook.
The junta has also used the country's draconian law against criticizing the
monarchy -- violations of which carry a jail term of up to 15 years -- to silence
critics. Traditionally, lese-majeste refers to insults against the monarchy. But
Activists, who were detained after posting comments critical of the ruling military junta on
Facebook, leave a military court in Bangkok on May 10, 2016. © Reuters
Apr.3 06:00 China moves its factories back to
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many of those now detained under its provisions are pro-democracy activists
and outspoken critics of the military regime.
Since the May 2014 coup, at least 117 people have been arrested on charges of
lese-majeste, according to the International Federation for Human Rights, a
France-based pressure group. Fifty-two suspects have been sentenced to
prison terms of up to 35 years. To date, at least 60 people are either in
detention awaiting trial or serving prison sentences for lese-majeste. Before
the military takeover there were only six such prisoners.
Political corruption is still rampant in
Southeast Asia, encouraging many regional
governments to clamp down on freedom of
expression to keep those who complain in
line. This, in turn, stunts countries'
political development.
Critics say that with the U.S. showing less
interest in defending human rights and in
Asia generally, authoritarian governments are having an easier time. When
U.S. President Donald Trump met with Prayuth at the White House in
October, the issue of free speech did not come up. Under Trump's
predecessor, Barack Obama, Thai military government was taken to task.
Authoritarian rule, sometimes called "developmental dictatorship," has long
been a feature of Southeast Asian politics. But with growing middle-class
populations hungry for freedom and democracy, the old methods of
maintaining order may not work. Leaders may find that harsh crackdowns on
freedom of expression come at the cost of the steady economic growth on
which their long-term survival depends.
Nikkei staff writers Takashi Nakano in Singapore and Jun Suzuki in
Jakarta contributed to this report.
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4/3/2018 Cambodian leader Hun Sen's Facebook 'likes' become subject of lawsuit | World news | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/09/cambodian-leader-hun-sen-facebook-likes-subject-lawsuit-sam-rainsy 1/4

Cambodian leader Hun Sen's Facebook 'likes'
become subject of lawsuit
Hannah Ellis-Petersen South-east Asia correspondent
Exiled opposition leader Sam Rainsy claims prime minister bought ‘likes’ to
appear popular
Fri 9 Feb 2018 17.52 GMT
The exiled Cambodian politician Sam Rainsy has ﬁled a legal suit against
Facebook, demanding it hand over any information which could prove that
the Cambodian prime minister, Hun Sen, purchased millions of “likes” to
appear popular on the social media platform.

The lawsuit is the first time that Facebook has been sued for information
regarding a world leader’s page, and could have major implications in
Cambodia where Facebook is the main news source for many and hugely
influential in politics.
Rainsy, who led the recently banned opposition Cambodia National Rescue
party (CNRP) in the 2013 election and now lives in exile in France, was taken
to court for defamation after he made the claim that Hun had misused the
social media website to falsify his own popularity.
After joining Facebook in 2016 Hun’s page was one of the fastest growing on
the site, with 3m likes within a matter of months. He now has over 9m likes
and in a recent report his Facebook page ranked third in global engagement
among world leaders.
However, analysis noted that 80% of the accounts that liked the prime
minister’s page came from countries outside Cambodia, including, India,
Mexico and the Philippines. These are places where click farms – companies
that sell fake social media popularity – are known to operate.
Hun denied that this proved any of the likes were fake, stating that it was
simply an indicator of his global popularity.
“We are counting on Facebook to help shed light on the regime’s manipulation
of technology,” said Rainsy. “If Hun Sen has nothing to hide, he should
support our investigation of his activities.”
Rainsy can legally apply to Facebook for the information – which the
company, known for its strict privacy, would usually not give out – because it
could be used as defence in his defamation case in Cambodia.
Rainsy’s lawyer Richard Rogers contacted Facebook 18 months ago to inform
the company that there was a “real concern” that Hun Sen was manipulating
the democratic process through Facebook by buying likes and giving a false
impression of his popularity. He got no response from Facebook, so working
with a San Francisco law firm he put the wheels in motion for the lawsuit.

Rogers said the objective was to “uncover how the Hun Sen regime is
misusing the platform to prop up its popularity and to give a false impression
of its legitimacy. It’s important to set the record straight and the people of
Cambodia have the right to know if their leader is manipulating them.”
The lawsuit also requests Facebook send any evidence of Hun disseminating
propaganda though the platform, and using it to make threatening, abusive
and harassing statements to Rainsy and his supporters, which directly violates
Facebook’s code of conduct.
Rogers said that as Facebook became more and more powerful and relevant to
political debates and issues “they can’t just stand by and say ‘this is nothing to
do with us’. This is the promotion of fake news and propaganda by the
authoritarian Hun Sen regime, using Facebook. They are helping to prop up a
dictator.”
The lawsuit comes in the wake of the complete collapse of democracy in
Cambodia. In December Cambodia’s top court ordered the CNRP, the only
opposition party, to be dissolved, ensuring that Hun – who has been prime
minister for 33 years – would have no opponents in the upcoming general
election.
Hun also uses Facebook to disseminate his message to young people and
target his critics. At least 15 people have been arrested in Cambodia over
Facebook posts since 2014, and others have been threatened.
Should it be proved that Hun broke Facebook’s code of conduct, it could lead
to his Facebook page being taken down. So far the only world leader whom
Sam Rainsy, the former opposition leader, claims that
Hun Sen misused Facebook to falsify his own
popularity. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

this has happened to is Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed leader, Ramzan Kadyrov,
whose Facebook account was taken down last month.
Facebook spokeswoman Genevieve Grdina declined to comment on the
lawsuit, but noted that any page can target ads to an international audience.
The company also blocks the registration of millions of fake accounts on a
daily basis, she said, and has improved its systems to identify fraudulent
users.
Sam Levin contributed reporting from San Francisco.
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4/3/2018 The tangled web: how leaks, lies and fake news took over Cambodian politics
http://sea-globe.com/the-tangled-web-how-leaks-lies-and-fake-news-took-over-cambodian-politics/ 1/15

The tangled web: how leaks, lies and fake
news took over Cambodian politics
By: Paul Millar - Posted on: March 7, 2017 | Current Affairs (http://sea-globe.com/category/current-affairs/)
As social media becomes the number one news source for young Cambodians, the spectre
of ‘fake news’ is haunting a nation whose politics is wracked by rumour and ridicule
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Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen strikes a pose with some of his supporters. Photo: EPA/Mak Remissa
In the last days of 2016, a warning from the Thai government spread across Cambodia’s social
media like a stain: canned food manufactured in Thailand had been contaminated with HIV. At
the urging of some nameless supervisor, the story went, more than 200 HIV-positive workers
had intentionally infected countless products with their blood. On Facebook, on Twitter, in mass
texts, the message was clear: no Thai product was safe.
It wasn’t until the Thai embassy in Cambodia released a furious statement that rumour gave
way to reality: nothing about the story was true. Although exposed as a lie, it had already gone
viral.
As Cambodians increasingly turn to social media for their daily information x, the fervour for
‘fake news’ – which has saturated Western media since it came to de ne the 2016 US
presidential election – has taken hold of a nation where lies and libel have long been used as
political weapons.
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“[Many social media accounts] just spread rumours instead of posting about con rmed news,
and they can also be biased,” said 24-year-old human resources worker Hak Sreypov, a view
shared by many of the Phnom Penh residents Southeast Asia Globe spoke to. “So when I read
those [sources], I lose con dence and trust in them. Also, sometimes they try to attack certain
individuals with their posts. When I see that, I think the page can’t be trusted.”
Sreypov said Facebook remained her main source of news despite its unreliability.
And with some news sites getting plenty of clicks even with dubious content, they are not
shying away from publishing material yet to be proven either true or false, choosing instead to
regurgitate unsourced information that falls in line with their own political biases.
In early February, a Facebook account under the name ‘Seyha’ posted an unveri ed recording
allegedly exposing then-opposition leader Sam Rainsy working his Parisian charm on an
unknown woman. With it came a warning: “All the CNRP [Cambodia National Rescue Party]
supporters, please listen: Sam Rainsy, our president, always seeks sexual intercourse with a
masseuse and now even a waitress, known as Phal.”
As scoops go, they don’t come much better. Digital news site-cum-government mouthpiece
Fresh News soon had the story. Poised above the pained smirk of Cambodia’s most famous
opposition face, the black text almost seemed to burn a hole into the screen: “Sam Rainsy
Allegedly Seduces a Waitress”.
Alongside the article – an admirable exercise in economy of language at just four paragraphs –
was the recording itself: “Today is Thursday,” the man’s voice cooed. “Tomorrow is Friday, then
Saturday. Saturday we’ll meet with each other.”
“2017 is the year that CNRP’s heads have faced many alleged mistresses,” Fresh News added
helpfully.
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Last month, several opposition lawmakers found themselves facing public humiliation after
Fresh News faithfully reproduced a barrage of unsourced accusations from the same Facebook
page suggesting they were caught up in illegal gambling, extramarital affairs and – most
sordidly – public sex within the National Assembly. Never one to miss an opportunity, Prime
Minister Hun Sen called for an internal investigation into the rumours and, should it be
required, a Buddhist ceremony to thoroughly “cleanse” the building.
Cambodian chain Brown Coffee has more than 15 stylish cafés, which are popular congregation spots for young
people addicted to social media. Photo: Jeremy Meek
Coming less than a week before Cambodia’s exiled opposition leader resigned from his post, in
what he framed as an effort to save his party from dissolution at the hands of the ruling
Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), this latest round of rumour and raunch may have seemed the
least of Rainsy’s worries. But as the international media works itself to fever pitch over the
spectre of so-called ‘fake news’, the regime’s relentless attacks on the reputations of its enemies
has taken on a grim new character.
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Days after Rainsy’s resignation, a letter allegedly written by him was circulated on social media
after appearing on Fresh News. In it, “Rainsy” pushed CNRP leaders to appoint his wife as the
party’s new president ahead of his deputy Kem Sokha. Although Rainsy dismissed the document
as fake, Hun Manith – head of military intelligence and one of the prime minister’s sons – held
it up on social media as proof of in ghting within the opposition.
For Cambodian Centre for Human Rights executive director Chak Sopheap, it is a pattern of
deception that shows few signs of easing.
“The recent leaks targeting CNRP politicians may be conducted over a new medium, but the
political game being played is a familiar one,” she said. “Then, as now, these personal matters
are used as an attempted distraction from the severe human rights issues plaguing the country.”
Council of Ministers spokesperson Phay Siphan said the leaks were a matter for private
individuals.
“We don’t have any law to regulate social media – we don’t have that,” he said. “But we are
worrying, everyone in Cambodia, about fake news.”
On 1 March, Rainsy raised the stakes by distributing an extensive cache of alleged text messages
involving senior CPP gures, members of Hun Sen’s family and prominent businesspeople. As
Southeast Asia Globe went to print the content of the alleged logs had not been veri ed but
appeared to highlight links between the ruling party and several high-pro le business moguls.
Rainsy, who claimed he had not even read the les before forwarding them from an anonymous
source to the media, appeared unaware of the hypocrisy of leaking unveri ed personal
information while telling the Cambodia Daily: “I am not going to take part in one way or
another in this despicable game with very cheap people.”
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Cambodian Centre for Human Rights executive director Chak Sopheap. Photo: Jeremy Meek
The opposition has not been entirely innocent of stretching the truth to further its own agenda
either – though there’s no doubt that the consequences of their claims have been more severe in
a country where defamation suits are frequently wielded as a blunt instrument by the ruling
party. In November, opposition senator Hong Sok Hour was sentenced to seven years in prison
on forgery-related charges for his involvement in a 2015 video posted online that presented a
fake 1979 treaty between Vietnam and Cambodia to “dissolve” the border between the two
nations. This accusation – echoing the long-held CNRP line that Hun Sen and his party are little
more than Vietnamese stooges – continues to resonate among the CNRP and its supporters: in
December, Rainsy and two of his assistants were sentenced in absentia to ve years in prison for
a Facebook post once again holding up the treaty as legitimate. Six months earlier, Rainsy was
ordered to pay almost $40,000 after falsely claiming that the 1980s regime led by now-National
Assembly president Heng Samrin had sentenced King Norodom Sihanouk to death. No such
sentence was passed.
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Long Sokunthyda, an 18-year-old majoring in global affairs at the American University of
Phnom Penh, said she was sceptical of information spread across social media by politicians
from all parties.
“They’re promoting themselves,” she said. “It’s all about the good deeds that they do, so we
don’t really know whether it’s true or not because they’re just trying to self-promote.”
CNRP vice-president and rights activist Mu Sochua rejected the idea that the opposition
manufactured information to match their own agenda.
“I don’t think we have used social media to spread false documents or news – it’s not part of our
strategy,” she said. “We do not create false documents. If we have information, we will share it
with the public, but we don’t produce fake documents.”
For 22-year-old salesperson Hun Chanpisey, though, not all consumers of online news are savvy
enough to lter fact from ction.
“Most of the time people don’t take the time to really think about the news – they just eat the
information up, and even agree with the ideas that the news posted without trying to con rm
it,” he said.
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Vanaka Chhem-Kieth is a co-founder of online political discussion group Politikoffee. Photo: Jeremy Meek
Noan Sereiboth, an active blogger and a core member of political discussion group Politikoffee,
said anonymous and unsourced rumours targeting opposition politicians on social media were
only becoming more frequent as commune elections scheduled for June draw closer.
“It is a big concern when [social media users] share [a story] without knowing if it is true or not
or reading it in detail – because sometimes it is just propaganda,” he said. “Now some fake
account users are trying to spread sexual and gambling rumours of opposition party members to
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defame and attack them… Whether it is true or not, it can destroy their reputation and dignity
and… disturb their ability to campaign in the upcoming election.”
Sopheap said that while social media had freed many young Cambodians from a media
landscape previously dominated by government-aligned networks, its lack of accountability
made it a mine eld of dangerous misinformation.
“The rise of social media can be seen as a double-edged sword,” she said. “For the rst time,
enriched information is accessible to a large section of the population, marking an improvement
to the prior situation in which people mostly relied on pro-government news sources. However,
as we have seen, this also leaves people very vulnerable to manipulation by fake news.”
It is a problem that will only continue to grow as Cambodia’s youth become more and more
entrenched in social media. An Asia Foundation report into mobile use in Cambodia released
last year revealed that Facebook had overtaken other media as the number one source for news
among Cambodians, with 30% of respondents reporting that social media was their primary way
of getting informed about news and current events. As with the rest of the world, it is a
transition driven by rising access to technology: the survey found that almost half of
Cambodians owned at least one smartphone – more than double the percentage reported three
years ago.
Sereiboth suggested that a dearth of independent mainstream media was partly to blame for
driving young Cambodians toward alternative news sources. “When media outlets af liated with
the ruling party provide biased news, the youth turns to social media to access news to see the
real Cambodia rather than to believe what one side tells them,” he said.
The murky ownership of Cambodia’s Khmer-language news outlets has long been criticised by
human rights groups, but the extent of Hun Sen’s domination of the Kingdom’s media was
dragged into the spotlight once more with the publication of Global Witness’ Hostile Takeover
report last year.
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The report listed Hun Sen’s eldest daughter Hun Mana as one of two media moguls with
extensive holdings across radio, television and the print media. The three television stations
and one radio station broadcast by media company Bayon Media Hight System, of which Mana is
both chairperson and majority shareholder, are notorious for their bias toward the ruling party.
Popular Khmer language newspaper Kampuchea Thmey Daily, which frequently publishes pro-
CPP articles, is similarly chaired and owned by Mana.
A group of skateboarders absorbed by their smartphones on Sisowath Quay in Phnom Penh. Photo: Jeremy Meek
Pa Nguon Teang, executive director of the Cambodian Centre for Independent Media, said the
prime minister’s grip on Cambodia would not be possible without his family’s stranglehold on
the nation’s news outlets. “Hun Sen has ruled this country by media, not by a system of
authority,” he told Southeast Asia Globe after the report’s release.
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http://sea-globe.com/the-tangled-web-how-leaks-lies-and-fake-news-took-over-cambodian-politics/ 11/15POPULAR
For Vanaka Chhem-Kieth, a lecturer at Paññasastra University and co-founder of Politikoffee
Media, the lack of trustworthy mainstream news sources in Cambodia made the potential
pitfalls of social media even more concerning than in countries with reliable independent
media. “Social media, Facebook and so on are a fact of life – it’s the tool of our generation,” he
said. “And just like in any other country it’s a learning process, except that some of the potential
drawbacks here and cons of social media are potentially a lot bigger than [in the West].”
In the lead-up to the June commune elections, he said, the risk of an increasingly polarised
population would only be worsened by the unsourced information saturating social media.
“It could [affect the election] in terms of fake news being spread around, in terms of people
reacting in very emotional ways to events or news that can more easily be blown out of
proportion through that platform rather than through balanced and less-instant media,” he
said. “So there’s de nitely additional risks.”
The Kingdom remains rife with rumour, a situation that appears unlikely to change any time
soon. And for Sokunthyda, the problem is re ective of a deep political divide within Cambodia’s
public.
“It depends which side you’re on,” she said. “You see what you want to see and you trust what
you want to trust.”
– Additional reporting by Hemmunind Hou
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4/3/2018 Is Facebook Ruining Southeast Asia's Potential For Social Media?
https://www.techinasia.com/facebook-ruining-southeast-asias-potential-social-media 1/4
O P I N I O N / S O C I A L M E D I A
Anh-Minh Do · 25 Jun 2013 · 2 min read
Is Facebook Ruining Southeast Asia’s Potential
For Social Media?
C AT E G O R I E S M A R K E T S W R I T E R S
News

If you look across the landscape of social in Southeast Asia, you see a world dominated by
Facebook. Just to point out a few highlights, Indonesia just hit 64 million total Facebook users,
Bangkok is the city with the most Facebook users in the world, and Vietnam is most likely the
fastest growing Facebook nation in the world. In total, Southeast Asia, by my calculations, includes
about 140 million Facebook users[1], and my thesis is it’s holding back other social media models
from growing.
One example is LinkHay, Vietnam’s Digg, which existed prior to Facebook’s entrance to Vietnam.
As the current managing director told me, LinkHay took a big hit in traffic after the arrival of

Facebook. I’ve heard varying versions of this across the region. News portals, nascent social media
sites, and even blogging platforms have all been hit hard by Facebook entering the region. They’ve
either died, floundered, or learned to adapt and launch on top of Facebook.
So right now, Facebook is steamrolling Southeast Asia (let’s set aside the chat apps for a second),
where some first-time internet users actually know about Facebook before they know about “the
internet”. On one side, it’s great for the region, as people get more connected and can launch unique
monetized platforms on top of it. On the other hand, many social media startups with potential are
being squashed before they can even sprout. Why start a new localized Reddit that can combine
online communities when we’ve got people sharing and liking links on Facebook? Why start a news
aggregator when we’ve got Facebook? Thus, Southeast Asia’s internet remains dominated by
forums in some nations and Facebook is the sole uniter across the region as a whole (and
sometimes Twitter).
But it won’t always be like this. Eventually the tides will change, albeit years from now. We’re going
to have to wait for Facebook’s growth to even out before we start to see some really unique social
media platforms that address the more specific needs of internet users (like topic-based sites like
Quora). Facebook is now at the forefront of Southeast Asian users’ social media habits and needs,
but as they get more acclimated and bored with Facebook, more models are going to rise. It’s just
too bad it’s still too early for that. Facebook has all the users, and it’s hard to take them away right
now.
p id=”footnote-1″>[1] 64,000,000 (Indonesia) + 12,800,000 (Vietnam) + 18,000,000 (Thailand) +
30,000,000 (Philippines) + 13,300,000 (Malaysia) + 250,000 (Laos) + 700,000 (Cambodia) +
80,000 (Myanmar) = 139,130,000 total. This does not include East Timor and Brunei, whose
populations are quite small. Most of these numbers are from early 2013.
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Director of Communications at Vertex Ventures. http://anhminhdo.com
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More articles ↓

4/3/2018 Southeast Asia is about to pass the US in Facebook and Twitter users — Quartz
https://qz.com/560326/southeast-asia-is-about-to-pass-the-us-in-facebook-and-twitter-users/ 1/4
SOCIAL STUDIES
Southeast Asia is about to pass
the US in Facebook and Twitter
users
Steve Mollman November 26, 2015

A selﬁe worth sharing. (Reuters/Chaiwat Subprasom)
In October a live event related to a kooky Filipino soap opera became the most
tweeted event in history. The previous record-holder had been the Brazil vs.
Germany match at the FIFA World Cup in July 2014. The news probably came as a
surprise to many, but as recently released data from the research rm eMarketer
shows, Southeast Asians take their social media seriously
Looking at Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam,
the rm concluded that in 2016, those nations will collectively, for the rst time,
pass the United States in the number of Facebook and Twitter users—and then pull
well ahead in the years to come. (For its forecasts of social network growth, the rm
used Facebook and Twitter numbers only.)


Share
Number of Facebook and Twitter users
’15 ’16 ’17 ’18
0
125
250 million
SE Asia US
Data: eMarketer

Share
Population in 2014
SE Asia
US
547.4 million
318.9
Data: World Bank
Of course, collectively those nations have signi cantly more people than the US:
But internet penetration is still lower than average in Southeast Asia. In Indonesia
only about a third of the population has internet access.
Among those in the region who have internet access, social media penetration is
high, especially in the case of Facebook. In fact, some enthusiastic Facebook users
in Indonesia have no idea they are on the internet, the social network is so
ubiquitous.

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