Cambodia blocked access to Voice of Democracy (VOD)

On 13th February 2023, government officials in Cambodia revoked the operating license of Voice of Democracy (VOD) – one of Cambodia’s last independent media outlets. On the same day, OONI data collected from Cambodia showed that access to VOD websites was blocked, while recent data suggests that the blocks remain ongoing.

The following chart aggregates OONI measurement coverage from the testing of vodenglish.news (the English version of VOD), vodkhmer.news (the Khmer version of VOD) and vodhotnews.com (which redirects to vodkhmer.news) on multiple networks in Cambodia between 1st January 2023 to 1st November 2023.

As is evident from the above chart, all three VOD domains (vodenglish.news, vodkhmer.news, vodhotnews.com) were previously accessible on tested networks in Cambodia, and only started presenting anomalies on 13th February 2023 – which correlates with the date when VOD’s operating license was revoked. Moreover, most measurements from the testing of these three domains presented anomalies thereafter, providing a strong signal of blocking. Between 1st January 2023 to 1st November 2023, both the English (vodenglish.news) and Khmer (vodkhmer.news) versions of VOD were tested on 21 ASNs and presented anomalies on most networks.

In terms of how the blocks were implemented, OONI data shows that different ISPs in Cambodia used different censorship techniques. Many measurements show DNS tampering, such as cases where the private IP 127.0.0.1 or an NXDOMAIN error is returned as part of DNS resolution. In other cases, we observe IP blocking and TLS interference (as connections are reset during the TLS handshake). The variety of censorship techniques suggests that the blocks were implemented in a decentralized way. However, it was reported that Cambodian officials coordinated with all registered ISPs, instructing them to block the Khmer and English language versions of VOD at 10am on 13th February 2023. OONI data shows that many ISPs complied immediately, with the first OONI measurement showing blocking at 10:17 local time.

Recent OONI data shows that the blocking of VOD remains ongoing.