An article from last week, on the Atlantic website, entitled “In Cambodia, Comedians Double as Government Propagandists,” tells the story of Krem and a gaggle of other Cambodian comedians who are members of the Prime Minister Bodyguard Unit, an autonomous section within the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces. They also share membership in the “Propaganda and Education Commission” which is made up of “152 performers and artists, including the bulk of the country’s comedians.” It’s not all the comedians– just most of them– who carry their leader Hun Sen’s message to the people via television, radio and live performances.

…this kind of politicized comedy is shown on all of the country’s eight television stations — performed by comedians who, frequently, are also paid members of Hun Sen’s personal bodyguard unit. Many of the comedians bear the rank of colonel or lieutenant colonel.

The country’s dozens of “colonel comedians” underscore the extent to which Hun Sen and his CPP have consolidated power over the past two decades, successfully marginalizing not just rival politicians but also dissenting artistic and cultural voices.

“It is further evidence of the deep reach of Hun Sen’s personal networks of loyalties, and the growing difficulty of doing opposition politics in Cambodia,” said Duncan McCargo, a professor of Southeast Asian politics at the University of Leeds.

Atlantic finesses the situation by sayin that opposition to Hun Sen has been “consolidated”. (Translation: Hun Sen is systematically eliminating opposition by jailing journalists, opposition members of Parliament, lawyers and “government critics.” The leader of Funcinpec, the only serious opposition part, fled and is in exile in Paris after being sentenced to jail.) Perhaps we can’t blame the author, Julia Wallace, as she is living in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital.

Wallace tells of another comedian named “Koy” (not to be confused with Jo Koy):

Koy, the stage name of Colonel Chuong Chy, a doughy, thick-featured man, is also active on behalf of the government. Of the four men in the comedy troupe that Koy leads, three of them — including Kren, a popular comedian with dwarfism — belong to the Prime Minister Bodyguard Unit. The fourth is an officer in the 70th Infantry Brigade of the Cambodian army, which is also closely linked to the premier and has been accused of human rights abuses.

Like Krem, Koy joined the bodyguards in the 1980s, starting out as a captain and rising to colonel two years ago in a mass promotion of entertainers. In person, he is terse and severe, rarely cracking a smile. Although he openly describes the work he does as propaganda, he insists his troupe writes all its own skits with no government input.

“We just tell people how good [Hun Sen] is, how he constructed the country, how many buildings he builds,” Koy told me backstage after one of his performances, fiddling irritably with the keys to his Lexus. “Nobody tells us what to say. We just describe what we have seen- — roads, schools, irrigation — and make it a little bit funny.”

Emphasis ours.

A decade ago, when Funcinpec was a more serious contender for power, it had its own comedian-affiliates. But as the party has dwindled over the past few years, its comedians have all defected to the CPP.

The best known of them, Lorcy, struggled for years to find work after campaigning for Funcinpec during the 2003 election season. He claimed he had been blacklisted from the airwaves and feared for his life. In 2009, he defected from Funcinpec and published an open letter of apology to Hun Sen through General Bunheang. His career immediately picked up. Krem invited him to join his troupe for a guest appearance, and now Lorcy regularly performs on two government-affiliated stations. On April 1, he became a lieutenant colonel in the bodyguard unit.

“I was really regretful of my mistake, which was why I apologized for forgiveness…”

Were this kind of situation to exist in America, we wonder: Would you be in jail for cracking wise about the oppressive regime? Or would you be the comedian who flees to Australia, telling jokes about the awful conditions in your native land? Or would you be the comedian with the Lexus?