Guest Comments by Linda Noche

The writer is a co-ordinator for the Hong Kong-based Asian Centre for the Progress of Peoples.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia – Last November a Cambodian labor-union leader named Sous Chantha was arrested on what looks like a false drug-trafficking charge. He remains in detention. On December 24, his case was heard. An application for release-on-bail was rejected.

The charge carries a penalty of two-to-five years in prison. Many people urge the government to release Sous in the absence of adequate evidence. But the government has made no response.

Arrested without warrant by military police, Sous was searched and told that the authorities had followed him for three days. That contradicts a police report presented in court that says the police only became suspicious when seeing him pass on the street. The report said the police had set up a roadblock to search for vehicles and individuals with weapons, but no roadblocks existed at the time.

The only evidence was photos of drugs allegedly found on the union leader's motorcycle. At first, the police queried why Sous carried a walkie-talkie device. An officer requested the keys to his motorcycle to search it. Upon examining the seat, he reportedly pulled out nine small packages of illegal pills hidden between the seat and the chassis.

Sous denies the charge. He believes he was framed for leading a 1,000-worker union newly affiliated with the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers Democratic Unions, an organizer of a four-day strike by 200,000 garment workers last September.

On November 19, hundreds of workers gathered in front of the court and demanded immediate release for Sous. As they protested, the court secretly sent him to prison.  

This case reflects the continued mistreatment of Cambodian workers. A member of a local NGO says that arrested garment workers rarely win their cases because the wealthy employer association, the Garment Manufacturer Association in Cambodia, has strong links to powerful government officials. The garment industry is the country's third-biggest foreign-currency earner.

The September strike, for fair wages to ensure basic living standards, ended with a meeting called by the Ministry of Social Affairs. Then the employers promptly dismissed the most active strike participants and even filed cases against them. About 300 workers still await reinstatement.

Well-known garment companies place the largest orders at Cambodian factories. Although some brands have taken steps to ease the workers' plight resulting from low pay and difficult conditions, local groups call the results insufficient.

A strong need remains to step up the efforts to ensure that workers no longer must suffer for legally exercising their rights to strike.

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