Last week, Prime Minister Hun Sen was one of the eleven talking heads on a regional teleconferencing call to discuss the novel coronavirus pandemic. This call included ten heads of government in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations region and the regional bloc’s general secretary.
The leaders were attending a virtual ASEAN summit on the morning of April 14, highlighting their views on the pandemic and measures that needed to be taken to protect the region. As of Tuesday, there were 30,116 reported cases in the region and 1,171 deaths from the respiratory disease.
When it was the turn of Prime Minister Hun Sen, he surprisingly called on leaders of the bloc to refrain from taking unilateral decisions that would have a socio-economic impact on the people of another country. He did not elaborate on which nations he was referring to.
