Category: Government and Society

Human Rights Day in Cambodia

December 10th this year was the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration on Human Rights.  It’s a public holiday in Cambodia but that just means that the government schools and government offices and the banks are closed.  Everything else is open.

This is the headline on the Phnom Penh Post on Monday, December 10.  No one in the government of Cambodia would see the irony of the government forbidding–on Human Rights Day–a march celebrating human rights.   It would disrupt traffic, said the government flunky with a straight face.

 

To make matters worse, today, the day after Human Rights Day, the newspaper announces that Cambodians enjoy “full freedoms”—except the right to peaceful assembly, that is.

IDPD 2018

Today was Cambodia’s official celebration of the International Day for People with Disabilities.  The UN-designated day was 3 December but the government here transferred the celebration to today.  The annual event is rather a charade.  No person with a disability spoke or had any role in the planning or enacting of the celebration.  No person with a disability was even on the stage except for Mr. Veasna, in a wheelchair, who is head of the National Center for People with Disabilities.  We were required to be in the hall 1.5 to 2 hours before the starting point, the deputy prime minister spoke for 1.5 hours, they gave $1.25 to each person with a disability, and that was it.

The deputy prime minister spoke an hour and a half, the only event of the celebration.
This was the reaction of the people with disabilities sitting beside and behind me.
This our DDP sign language interpreter. Notice how many of the deaf people are following the interpretation she is giving of the speech.

You think you’ve got it bad…

Headlines and news reports from United States media frequently make reference to the campaign to raise the minimum wage in the U.S. to $15 an hour.  The minimum wage is also a matter for discussion in Cambodia but here the goal of organized labor is a minimum wage of $182 PER MONTH.  The current wage norm here is $170 per month, raised before last July’s elections in order to get the garment industry workers to support the ruling party.

It’s no wonder why….

Tens of thousands of garment factory workers–usually young women–ride to work each day jammed, standing up, in the back of open trucks.  Many of them are killed in the frequent accidents when trucks overturn and collide from speeding and throw bodies everywhere.  The government’s response? “Training” drivers to obey the law and “urging” them to get driver’s licenses.  That’s a neat idea.

Cambodian Government 7

Today’s Khmer Times newspaper has this article about a woman jailed for throwing a shoe at a billboard image of the prime minister!  The prime minister regularly reminds the people that he is not a dictator and government spokesmen repeat again and again the claim that human and civil rights are respected.  Does this look anyone has freedom of speech?  Basically it shows how weak and insecure the current government is when they feel they need to prosecute such a trivial event.