Cambodia’s Hun Sen welcomes Trump's decision to freeze Voice of America and other US-funded media outlets

Cambodia’s Hun Sen has backed US President Donald Trump’s move to axe Voice of America and other US-funded broadcasters, which have long been critical of the influential former strongman.

Hun Sen ruled Cambodia with an iron fist for nearly four decades, shutting down multiple independent media outlets, and the kingdom places near the bottom of international press freedom rankings.

Trump signed an order on Friday freezing VOA, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe and other outlets as part of his sweeping cuts to federal government spending.

Hun Sen welcomed the move, praising Trump for “his courage to lead the world in combating fake news, starting with news outlets funded by the US government”.

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“This is a major contribution to eliminating fake news, disinformation, lies, distortions, incitement, and chaos around the world, coming from the propaganda machine that President Trump has stopped funding,” Hun Sen said in a statement issued late on Monday.

The veteran leader, who handed power to his son Hun Manet in 2023, has been the subject of critical reporting by VOA and Radio Free Asia.

Hun Sen said he told Trump during an ASEAN-US summit in the Philippines in 2017 that the “lack of trust in the United States by some countries also stems from the US media, which misleads those countries into believing that it is the position of the US government”.

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Critics accused Hun Sen during his time in power of using intimidation and legal tactics to wipe out all opposition to his rule.

Press freedoms have long been under attack in Cambodia, with The Cambodia Daily shuttered in 2017 and a score of outlets closed the following year ahead of the 2018 elections.

In February 2023, online Khmer and English-language outlet Voice of Democracy (VOD)– one of Cambodia’s last independent media organisations – stopped broadcasting in the country.

Hun Sen ordered its licence revoked over what he said was an erroneous report about his eldest son.

High-profile Cambodian reporter Mech Dara, who won an international award for uncovering alleged cyber scams, quit journalism in November, saying he had lost “courage” after being arrested by the authorities.

Another Cambodian journalist, Chhoeung Chheung, died in December after he was shot while investigating illegal logging in the country’s northwest.

Concerns over press freedoms in Cambodia were further fuelled earlier this year when a British journalist with US-based conservation news website Mongabay was blacklisted and barred from re-entering the country.

Since 1994, at least 15 journalists have been killed in the Southeast Asian country, according to the Cambodian Center for Human Rights.