For more than thirty years, the world’s longest serving Prime Minister has been the archetypal

populist
strongman. He and his party (the Cambodian People’s Party, or CPP) combine terror and censorship with
personalised political handouts, promises of post-war stability, and a veneer of democracy.

This regime depends on funds channelled through networks of political and business elite who are
awarded land and mineral concessions in return for donations to the ruling party. At the same time as
rural areas have become ‘sacrifice zones’ for the enrichment of domestic and international elite, rural
voters have long been the most consistent and reliable supporters of Hun Sen’s government. In
Cambodia’s post-genocidal context, many rural people crave the stability and the ‘gift giving’ that Hun
Sen’s regime has provided.

In Cambodia’s post-genocidal context, many rural people crave the stability and the ‘gift giving’ that Hun
Sen’s regime has provided. This has allowed the party to marginalize opposition and build an elaborate
system of mass patronage and mobilization.

But in the past decade, land grabbing and logging have had serious impacts and rural people have
become more outspoken and connected with disaffected urban voters. The 2013 national election was
the ruling party’s worst outcome since 1998, with a united opposition (the CNRP) winning 44% of the
vote. Strikes erupted in the aftermath of the election and persisted for half the year until military police
shot dead five protesters. Then, in the June 2017 sub-national (‘Commune’) elections, the CNRP shocked
the ruling party by winning almost half the popular vote and gaining 482 commune seats, up from a
mere 40 seats in the previous election. This was a wake-up call that the CPP were at risk of being
unseated in the 2018 National Election.

After the commune elections, the ruling party stepped-up press censorship, extra-judicial violence and
threats of military intervention. A series of quiet law changes have facilitated the criminalisation of civil
society and political opposition.

The Law on NGOs and Associations limits the ability for people to gather without registering with the
Ministry of Interior and increases surveillance of NGOs. Amendments to the Law on Political Parties led
to the resignation of long-time leader of the opposition, Sam Rainsy, in February 2017. Further legal
moves that year introduced legislation that allowed the government to easily disband political parties,
which was used to shut down the main opposition party eight months later. The media is also targeted;
changes to the national media code enabled the government to shut down 19 independent radio
stations as well as the long-running newspaper The Cambodia Daily. A series of quiet law changes have
facilitated the criminalisation of civil society and political opposition.

By late 2017, with critical media outlets silenced and activists fearful of open protests, the way was
opened for the government to launch an outright attack on the political opposition. Just after midnight
on Sunday 3 September (the day before shutting the Daily), over one hundred armed soldiers broke into
CNRP leader Kem Sokha’s house and detained him without warning. He was later charged with treason.

In November, the Supreme Court dissolved the opposition party, re-assigning its seats and banning 118
individuals from political activities for five years. In February 2018, the National Assembly passed Thai-
style Lèse majesté laws that forbid insults to the monarchy, along with a series of vague changes to the
Cambodian Constitution, including a change that would allow the permanent removal of voting rights
for convicted felons.

As the CPP close media outlets and attack opposition parties, they are also bolstering their own
propaganda machine. The Phnom Penh Post was slapped with a phony tax bill and sold off in May 2018
to a CPP-aligned businessman who has claimed full editorial approval, causing the editor in chief and key
journalists to quit to maintain integrity.

The state news app, “Fresh News”, spreads pro-government propaganda across Facebook and other
state-run media. New pro-government research institutions, a ‘spy school’ to develop surveillance
technologies, and the creation of an inter-ministerial working group to produce anti-opposition
propaganda are being used to justify state violence.

Cambodia has been emboldened by the rise of China’s infrastructural support outflanking western
donor funds to Cambodia, and Trump’s near-total disengagement on Southeast Asia, coupled with his
own attacks on US media. Hun Sen has seized upon people’s latent anti-western sentiment, aggressively
deploying ‘us/them’ rhetoric to draw suspicion over the opposition party and western-funded media
and NGOs.