Facebook’s parent company Meta has rejected the recommendation of its Oversight Board to suspend the Facebook account of former Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen for violating its policy on incitement. The decision stems from a January video in which Sen threatened his political opponents with violence, allegedly in violation of Facebook’s community standards.
In its final decision on the matter, Meta said:
Upon assessing Hun Sen’s Facebook Page and Instagram account, we determined that suspending those accounts outside our regular enforcement framework would not be consistent with our policies, including our protocol on restricting accounts of public figures during civil unrest. We have removed the content that was the subject of this case and, consistent with our policies, applied appropriate account-level penalties associated with that action. There is not currently any basis to suspend Hun Sen’s account under our policies.
In June, the Oversight Board—which is funded by Meta but operates independently—overturned Meta’s decision to leave up a video on Facebook in which Sen threatened his political opponents with violence. At the time, the Oversight Board recommended that Facebook suspend Sen’s account for six months. Subsequently, Meta removed the video based on the board’s decision and announced that it would conduct a review of the boards remaining recommendations. Threatened by the board’s recommendation and a possible suspension of his Facebook account, the Sen quit the platform and proposed a country-wide ban of it.
Meta said that suspending Hun Sen’s accounts is not appropriate under our protocol on restricting accounts of public figures during periods of civil unrest and that the situation in Cambodia did not meet the entry criteria threshold for crisis designation under the Crisis Policy Protocol. The Crisis Policy Protocol assesses on- and off-platform risks of imminent harm to determine whether the conditions in Cambodia constituted a crisis. Meta said that it made the decision in accordance with public figure speech rules that it adopted following its suspension of former US President Donald Trump’s account.
The controversial video of the former Prime Minister came ahead of Cambodia’s national elections at the end of July. The final results were announced on August 5, after the National Election Committee (NEC) invalidated almost half a million votes. In the end, the results sealed a landslide victory for Sen’s ruling party, the Cambodian People’s Party. The elections was mired in controversy, as opposition leaders were barred from contesting elections. Prior to the elections, campaigns were carried out urging voters to invalidate their vote and declare the election null and void as a form of protest against the disqualification of the opposition Candlelight Party.
