In a strong state, a Trump order turns the sparkle from freedom

His father walked in a forest and killed, like so many victims of the Red Khmer in Cambodia. Before he was led, the father told his young son, Uon Chhin, to get up and tell the truth, even if it could compromise his freedom.

Decades later, Mr. Uon Chhin became a journalist at the apogee of the mud of the free press in Cambodia. But in 2017, he and a colleague from Radio Free Asia were accused of spying. Their nine -month imprisonment presumed an evisceration of human rights in Cambodia by Hun Sen, the longtime leader who has redone a young democracy in a dictatorial dynasty.

Now, the reduction of American foreign aid and the executive decree of President Trump last month to ban the information media funded by the United States such as Radio Free Asia and Voice of America erases the little space for freedom of expression in Cambodia. Thirty projects funded by the American Agency for International Development have been canceled, in particular those supporting civil society and an independent media.

It is a tectonic change in this Southeast Asian nation, which was once a laboratory for creating international democracy in the red post-Khmer era, then transformed into a strong state.

And he underlines the rise of another power, China, eager to influence a small country desperately desperately in cash and for a model of development of its rapidly growing economy.

Like China, Mr. Hun Sen celebrated the executive order of Mr. Trump targeting Radio Free Asia and Voice of America. To silence these press organizations funded by the Americans, he said, would be a “major contribution to the elimination of false news, disinformation, lies, distortions, incentives and chaos in the world”.