A Cambodian trade union leader released from prison this week after serving 15 months for organizing a strike at the NagaWorld casino resort in capital Phnom Pehn has vowed to continue her fight.
Chhim Sithar was arrested in November 2022 as she returned from a labor conference in Australia. She was later sentenced to two years in prison for incitement to commit a felony.
As president of the Labor Rights Supported Union of Khmer Employees of NagaWorld (LRSU), Sithar led a year-long protest over workers’ rights at the casino, which is Cambodia’s largest.
It was the longest strike in the country’s history, and it was eventually disrupted violently by Cambodian authorities. More than 200 protestors were arrested in February 2022 alone.
“About our advocacy fighting for union rights at NagaWorld, we will continue holding strike action until we get a solution. That’s the position we have determined since the first strike,” Sithar told the Associated Press this week.
“Unfortunately, as of today, after nearly three years, our workers have still not gotten justice. Therefore, as long as there’s no justice, our struggle continues,” she added.
‘Illegal’ Layoffs
Workers began the strike at NagaWorld in solidarity with 373 of their colleagues who were laid off in April 2021. The casino’s owner, NagaCorp, said the job cuts were designed to reduce costs amid the financial pressures of the pandemic.
But workers claimed the layoffs were illegal, and many refused to accept inadequate severance packages. Strikers were arrested on the pretext that they were breaching COVID-19 protocols.
Sithar’s arrest was criticized by the US government, which urged Cambodian authorities to allow her and other union leaders to exercise their rights to freedom of association and peaceful assembly.
The Cambodian government’s suppression of the strike was also condemned by the United Nations, which called on authorities to “respect the right to peaceful assembly and engage in dialogue to address the strikers’ legitimate requests.”
Repression of Critics
Cambodia’s autocratic government has intensified its repression of civilian activists and critics in recent years, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.
[During the pandemic] the government adopted a state-of-emergency law that grants the prime minister and others unfettered authority to surveil private telecommunications, and to ban the dissemination of information, while generally restricting the rights to peaceful assembly and association,” Human Rights Watch wrote.
“No one wants to be in prison, and I can say that we were afraid,” Sithar said this week. “But I want to make a comparison. Which one is the scarier? For me, the fear of losing the rights to a union, the fear of losing the right to unionize, is scarier than putting me in jail.”
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