Two months after anti-government websites first became inaccessible to users here, both the Telecommunications Ministry and Cambodian Internet service providers could offer no concrete causes yesterday for the blockage.
Though access was restored earlier this month, the websites—KI Media, Khmerization and Sacravatoons, blogs that often take a critical stance against the government—went dark to most Web users in late January. E-mails sent from an official at the Telecommunications Ministry that surfaced last month asked Internet companies to “[p]lease take an action” regarding the websites.
Nevertheless, Telecoms Minister So Khun said yesterday that the ministry had not investigated the matter and could not do so.
“We did not make any investigation…. It’s just like finding a needle in the seabed. Anyway, we can access it now,” Mr Khun said. “We don’t have the ability to find out the problem. The websites themselves better find out the problems.”
He repeated that no order was given to block access and denied any knowledge about the e-mails sent from the account of Sieng Sithy, deputy director of the ministry’s directorate of telecommunications policy, to employees at 10 different ISPs.
“I did not order any official or Sieng Sithy to e-mail Internet companies. If I did, I could use my own e-mail,” he said. “I don’t know that Sieng Sithy e-mailed to any Internet company. It is an individual right.”
Mr Sithy could not be reached.
Sok Channda, CEO of Cambodia Data Communications, which operates MekongNet and AngkorNet, said the company was at a loss as to what happened.
“We did not find the problem of the website, but we did not block the website. However it could be caused from an technical error or any problem elsewhere,” she said.
Authors of the blogs said they remained undaunted.
“Khmerization will never…change its editorial lines,” the blog’s anonymous author wrote in an e-mail. “It will continue its…critical stance against corruption, incompetence, human rights abuses by reporting the truth.”