| 19.10.2023

7th Cambodia General Elections: Internet Censorship Monitoring

Cambodia’s 7th national election was held on 23 July 2023. During this time, civil societies, journalists, and activists monitored internet censorship to ensure that digital rights and freedom of expression were being upheld.

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During the 7th Cambodian national election held on 23 July 2023, a total of 53 websites from different categories were monitored using the Open Observatory Network Interference (OONI) tool. The websites belonged to the following categories: News (21 websites), social media (6 websites), Human Rights Issues (14 websites), Social Networks (8 websites), and Government, Election, or Politician (4 websites).

Only the websites in the News and Human Rights category were found to be blocked, particularly those belonging to independent media. Specifically, 9 out of 21 websites from the News category and 1 out of 14 websites from the Human Rights category had been blocked by the internet service providers (ISPs) using the methods of DNS and TCP blocking. The independent news outlets with blocked websites were Radio Free Asia (English and Khmer websites), Voice of Democracy (English and Khmer websites), the Kamnotra database run by the Cambodia News, the Cambodia Daily, and Monoroom News.

Read the full report here: 7th Cambodia General Elections: Internet Censorship Monitoring (PDF)