Cambodian strongman leader Hun Sen has thrown his weight behind a new homegrown messaging app, which critics say is a way for the government to monitor and undermine political discussion in the country.
CoolApp, launched this month to rival WhatsApp and Telegram, will make it “difficult for foreigners to interfere with our information,” the former prime minister wrote in a post on his official Facebook page this week, adding that he was mindful of “national security.”
“It is the first-ever Cambodian program and used within the Cambodian security domain,” he wrote. “Other countries have their own social media means of communication like China’s WeChat, Vietnam’s Zalo, South Korea’s Kakao Talk and Russia’s Telegram, so in Cambodia, we have … our own product,” he added.
