Visitors to the Angkor Wat temple complex in the Siem Reap province of Cambodia. Photo from AFP
Cambodia has asked TikTok to remove a video of a Vietnamese social media influencer filmed at the Angkor Wat temple complex with “inappropriate costume and content”.
The video was filmed by Hua Quoc Anh, a TikToker living in Ho Chi Minh City with 700,000 followers, at the famous Angkor Wat in Cambodia’s Siem Reap province on October 30.
In the video that went viral on social media about a week ago, a young girl wearing a traditional Thai costume and holding a stick walks around the temple complex. It also incorporated images of the Thai flag and king, accompanied by the sound “Hello Thailand”.
On November 12, the Angkor Wat World Heritage Conservation Authority (Apsara) deemed the video seriously affecting Cambodian culture and heritage and said it had asked social network TikTok to block it.
The authority also urged online users not to continue sharing the video with “inappropriate content.”
The video has now been removed from the TikTok platform.
The Apsara Authority expressed its “deepest regrets” for not preventing the video from being filmed at the site and pledged to strengthen efforts “to maintain the cherished image of Angkor.” Khmer time reported.
Amid public backlash from the Vietnamese and Cambodian online communities, a Vietnamese TikToker came out to apologize to the Cambodian people.
“Now I knew I was wrong, I knew my mistake, so I sincerely apologized to my Cambodian friends. Never again will something like this happen,” he said in a video posted on his Facebook page.
The TikToker refused to share the reason for filming the video in Cambodia and to insert images and sounds related to Thailand.
Kim Phalet, an international tourist guide in Cambodia, said Cambodia and Thailand previously had a dispute over the Preah Vihear temple on the border with Thailand. Therefore, inserting Thai images into videos filmed at Angkor Wat temple angered the Cambodian people.
Angkor Wat is considered the heart and pride of the Cambodian people. The temple complex attracts millions of visitors from around the world every year and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992.
