Seeking Justice in Cambodia: Human Rights Defenders Speak Out

Sue Coffey is a writer and communications specialist who has worked in a wide range of roles across government and not-for-profit sectors. She has strong interest and experience in human rights issues, having worked in communications in these areas both in Australia and overseas. In 2012–13 she worked in Cambodia for the Australian Government’s overseas aid program, as communications advisor to the NGO Forum on Cambodia, a peak body in Phnom Penh working for human rights for all Cambodians. She then moved to Myanmar, where she was communications advisor to the Myanmar Government’s education reform program until 2015. Prior to these roles she worked in a diverse array of senior advisory and policy roles in the Victorian Government, peak bodies and not-for-profit organisations. All of the roles in which she has worked have taught her the importance of working towards a just and equitable world, in which all people have access to human rights and fair distribution of resources.

SEEKING JUSTICE IN

CAMBODIA

HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS

SPEAK OUT

EDITED BY SUE COFFEY

FOREWORD BY GARETH EVANS

MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS

An imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Limited

Level 1, 715 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia

mup-contact@unimelb.edu.au

www.mup.com.au

First published 2018

Text © Sue Coffey and the individual contributors, 2018

Design and typography © Melbourne University Publishing Limited, 2018

This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publishers.

Every attempt has been made to locate the copyright holders for material quoted in this book. Any person or organisation that may have been overlooked or misattributed may contact the publisher.

Typeset in Minion 11/14pt by Cannon Typesetting

Cover design by Philip Campbell Design

Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

9780522873290 (paperback)

9780522873306 (ebook)

9780522875010 (ebook in Khmer)

For Ben

and for all Cambodians,

now and in the future

Contents

Foreword

Gareth Evans

Preface

Sue Coffey

Interviews

  1 Benny Widyono

A Leading Member of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia, 1990–93, and UN Special Representative to Cambodia, 1994–97

  2 Thun Saray

Founder and President of the Cambodian Human Rights Development Association (ADHOC)

  3 Pung Chhiv Kek (Dr Kek Galabru)

Founder and President of the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO)

  4 Koul Panha

Executive Director of the Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia (COMFREL)

  5 Chhith Sam Ath

Executive Director of Hagar International and Former Executive Director of The NGO Forum on Cambodia

  6 Thida Khus

Founder and Executive Director of SILAKA

  7 HE Kem Sokha

President of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP)

  8 HE Keo Remy

Government Minister for Human Rights

  9 Ou Virak

Founder and Executive Director of Future Forum

10 Venerable Loun Sovath

Buddhist Monk and Human Rights Activist

11 Mam Sonando

Founder and Independent Radio Broadcaster for Beehive Radio

12 Chak Sopheap

Executive Director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR)

13 Am Sam Ath

Monitoring Manager for the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO)

14 Mark Chann Sitha

Coordinator of the Workers’ Information Center

15 Tep Vanny

Land Evictee from Boeung Kak Lake

Rhona Smith

UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Cambodia

Acronyms and Organisations

Acknowledgements

Index

FOREWORD

Gareth Evans

Seeking Justice in Cambodia is an important book. It records the stories of some extremely significant Cambodians who established the first human rights organisations in Cambodia in the wake of the signing of the Paris Peace Agreements in 1991 and the establishment of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) in 1992. Through a series of absorbing interviews, Sue Coffey follows the careers and experiences of those early founders, and adds the stories of younger human rights leaders in Cambodia today. These people have taken the struggle for human rights from the early 1990s to the present, and some are still leading the organisations they founded. Their mission has been to achieve human rights for all Cambodians, and they are still fighting for this goal. Their commitment deserves the attention and support of the wider world.

Cambodia’s journey has been a long and harrowing one. Before the signing of the Paris Peace Agreements, the country was on its knees—ravaged successively by massive US bombing, civil war, the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal reign of terror, invasion by the Vietnamese, and by civil war again. These onslaughts caused the deaths of some two million Cambodians and effectively destroyed the lives of many more.

The Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia in 1975, in the wake of the collapse of the US-backed Lon Nol administration, which had deposed Prince Norodom Sihanouk in a bloodless coup in 1970. To reach their goal of comprehensively transforming Cambodian society, the Khmer Rouge were responsible for the deaths of between one quarter and one third of the population—by outright execution or through starvation, illness and overwork. They particularly targeted intellectuals, the ‘petit bourgeois’, and those with religious affiliations and connections to the previous government. But executions became increasingly indiscriminate and included high-ranking cadres and members of the armed forces as mistrust and instability within the regime grew.

The Vietnamese invasion in the closing days of 1978 drove the Khmer Rouge out of the capital and brought an end to its genocidal reign of terror. It also witnessed the rise of Hun Sen, who became prime minister in 1985 and has continued in this role for thirty-two years, becoming one of the longest-serving heads of government in the world. But the Vietnamese arrival triggered a new civil war, with the Khmer Rouge still armed and active. Continual military fighting, guerilla assaults and ambushes, widespread displacement of people—with hundreds of thousands still in border refugee camps, unable to return home—and political repression, meant that life for the majority of Cambodians in the 1980s remained fraught.

The continuing conflict was complex and intractable. It was played out at three distinct levels. The first involved the four competing internal parties, with Hun Sen’s government ranged against the anti-communist United National Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful and Cooperative Cambodia (FUNCINPEC) of Prince Sihanouk and the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front (KPNLF) of Son Sann, and the militarily still powerful communist Khmer Rouge. Each group intensely mistrusted the others. The second level was regional, with Vietnam supporting Hun Sen’s government, and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) supporting his opponents. The third level involved the global powers, with China supporting the Khmer Rouge and Prince Sihanouk, the Soviet Union supporting Hun Sen, and the United States supporting the two non-communist resistance groups. Complicating matters further, throughout the 1980s Cambodia’s seat at the United Nations (UN) was held by a coalition of the two royalist parties and the Khmer Rouge, as the UN refused to recognise the government imposed by the Vietnamese as legitimate.

As the political impasse became more intractable, world powers sought a solution to the Cambodia problem with increasing determination. How to bring enduring peace and stability to this atrocity-, crime- and warwracked nation?

Hopes were raised when the Vietnamese confirmed their preparedness to withdraw troops from Cambodia by September 1989. France, the former colonial power that was still influential in the region, resolved to inaugurate a full-scale international peace conference on Cambodia. The Paris Peace Conference on Cambodia (PICC), with Indonesia as co-chair, brought together all four Cambodian factions, the six ASEAN countries, the permanent five members of the UN Security Council, Vietnam, Laos, Australia, Canada and India as well as Zimbabwe, and a representative of the UN Secretary-General. This conference came close, but failed, to reach a solution. The key stumbling block was that the combined forces of Prince Sihanouk, Son Sann and the Khmer Rouge demanded a place for all four internal parties—including the Khmer Rouge—in the transitional administration, but Hun Sen was utterly unwilling to accede to this demand.

It was in this context, after I succeeded Bill Hayden as Australia’s foreign minister in 1988, that I became closely involved in the peace process. The Hawke Government had come into office in 1983 with a commitment to play a more active role in the region generally, and Cambodia in particular, and Hayden had been very active in building relationships with the key players and exploring settlement options, but without managing to achieve any breakthroughs. My own contribution—built on ideas earlier put into circulation by Sihanouk and US Congressman Stephen Solarz, but not picked up by anyone else—was to identify the key to breaking the deadlock as finding a face-saving way for China to step away from its support for the Khmer Rouge. And we identified the circuit-breaker in this respect as being an unprecedentedly central role for the UN during the transition from war to peace.

The plan, which I announced in outline on 24 November 1989 in the Australian Senate, proposed that the UN become directly involved in the civil administration of Cambodia with a full, on-ground presence, assuming responsibility for the actual governance of the country, ensuring a neutral political environment, conducting a free and fair national election, and ensuring the maintenance of a ceasefire and the cessation of external military assistance. It was to be the first time that the UN took on such a commanding and comprehensive role in the civil administration of any country. There could be no guarantee that the Khmer Rouge, in particular, would honour the ultimate agreement, but the hope and expectation was that it would be reduced sooner or later to impotence as China stopped supplying it with arms and financial support, and as the country received very substantial economic, social and technical reconstruction assistance.

The plan was very ambitious, both in scale and in regard to the extremely difficult operational realities on the ground in Cambodia. But the response of the participants at the Paris Conference was extremely enthusiastic, as became evident in a whirl of diplomatic discussions Australia conducted across thirteen countries in the three weeks after my initial statement. Most importantly of all, PICC co-chair Indonesia—through its foreign minister Ali Alatas—warmly embraced the proposal, and worked closely with us to refine and develop it. In preparation for a new round of discussions in Jakarta, an Australian technical mission visited Cambodia in early February 1990 to gather information on administrative structures and other data necessary to a full-scale UN operation.

These papers were subsequently published as Cambodia: An Australian Peace Proposal, famously known thereafter as the ‘Red Book’, from the colour of its binding. The Red Book outlined in fully worked-through and costed detail the roles proposed for the UN in civil administration; in organising and conducting elections; and in maintaining a secure environment in which Cambodians might exercise their electoral choice free of fear, intimidation and violence. Our blueprint—with its estimate of US$1.3 billion as the price of an eighteen-month mission—proved remarkably prescient: the actual cost of the two-year UNTAC that was eventually put in place was US$1.7 billion.

New momentum for the UN peace plan was generated when the five permanent members of the Security Council met in January 1990 and agreed on a set of sixteen principles as the basis of their future discussions, which included the key ingredients of the Australian proposal. Diplomatic progress thereafter was by no means smooth, with many diversions and setbacks along the way, but eventually the Agreements on a Comprehensive Political Settlement of the Cambodia Conflict were signed on 23 October 1991 by the four Cambodian parties and the international participants at the Paris Peace Conference on Cambodia.

The settlement committed the Cambodian parties and those supporting them to a permanent ceasefire, the holding of free and fair elections, and the adoption of a new democratic constitution—all under the supervision of the UN. On 28 February 1992 the UN Security Council approved the overall plan for UNTAC, which called for over 20 000 personnel to join the mission. In the event, thirty-four countries contributed to the military operation and forty-five to the peacekeeping exercise overall. The whole enterprise was a huge commitment from the international community in terms of anything that had gone before.

The UN’s objectives were ambitious, aspiring to bring not only peace and democracy but genuine respect for all human rights to the long-suffering Cambodian people. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights embraced by the UN in 1948 spells out a very comprehensive range of rights to be recognised by every person and state—including the rights to life, liberty and security of person; to not be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; to recognition before the law; to own property, and not be deprived of it arbitrarily; to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; to freedom of expression and opinion; to free and fair elections; to peaceful assembly and association; to work and to a standard of living adequate to health and well-being; and to free early education.

Many of these rights were included in Article 15 of the Agreement on a Comprehensive Political Settlement of the Cambodia Conflict, which includes a broad statement that all persons will enjoy the rights and freedoms in the UN, and other relevant UN human rights instruments. It was also stipulated that the UN should continue to monitor closely the human rights situation in Cambodia, including, if necessary, through the appointment of a special rapporteur. This position has continued to the present day. The Paris Peace Agreements also required that a new Cambodian constitution would be developed by the new government, following a free and fair election that established a new legislative assembly. This was to embrace a pluralistic system of liberal democracy. It was to provide for periodic and genuine elections, the right to vote and be elected by universal suffrage, the right to secret ballot, and full and fair opportunity to participate in the electoral process.

The new Cambodian Constitution, developed after the general election of 1993, did in fact enshrine these rights. It undertook to ensure respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms in Cambodia. It also established the right of all Cambodian citizens to undertake activities to promote and protect these rights, including the right to strike and organise peaceful protests, within the framework of law. It stipulated an independent judiciary empowered to enforce the rights provided under the Constitution, with separation of powers between the legislature, executive and judiciary. It stipulated that the Kingdom of Cambodia would adopt a policy of liberal, multi-party democracy. And it also stated that effective measures should be taken to ensure the policies and practices of the past should never be allowed to return to Cambodia.

But, as so often in human affairs, there has been a gap between aspiration and reality. The story of UNTAC—as told compellingly in this book by Benny Widyono, one of its leaders—is certainly one of success on many fronts. It did not operate in quite the way its mandate contemplated, with the civil administration component never commanding the reins of government—monitoring, supervising and, as necessary, directing Hun Sen’s people—to the extent that the peace plan had intended, but the election was successfully conducted and transition to a new government successfully managed. The mission as a whole was continually frustrated by the Khmer Rouge, which refused to lay down its arms as intended, but external patrons did withdraw their material support, with the result that the Khmer Rouge did eventually wither on the vine, and the civil war did end. More than 365 000 displaced Cambodians were successfully repatriated from the Thai border. Reconstruction began, and the foundations were laid for Cambodia’s strong economic development. And Cambodia was at last removed as a source of wider regional and global tensions.

But while Cambodia since 1993 has remained at peace, it has been anything but a poster child for democracy and human rights. It has become clear over the years that the Paris Peace Agreements fell short in not including specific measures for building a functioning criminal justice system as part of the transitional period and post-conflict peace-building exercise. The rule of law, and institutions needed to support it, had clearly broken down in Cambodia. If a peacekeeping force is given a mandate to guard against human rights violations but there is no functioning system to support this, then its operation will be diminished in practice and in reputation. These issues are fundamental to any successful capacity to enforce compliance with human rights.

In 1991, at the signing of the Paris Peace Agreements, I said, ‘Peace and freedom are not prizes which, once gained, can never be lost. They must be won again each day. Their foundations must be sunk deep into the bedrock of political stability, economic prosperity and above all else, the observance of human rights.’ Sadly, since 1993, the truth of that observation has been borne out in the course of events under the leadership of Hun Sen. The democratic process has remained fragile, and it is no exaggeration to say that Cambodia today is a de facto one-party state.

In modern Cambodia, many of the rights enshrined in the Constitution are not respected by government and remain completely unattainable to the people. Cambodia’s legal system is in poor shape, with far too many having a sense that they can act with impunity. The courts are politicised. As Hun Sen has tightened his grip on the country, elections free from violence and intimidation, and the effective separation of powers, especially the judiciary, have disappeared. Cambodia has become one of the fastest growing economies in ASEAN, yet the wealth is not shared: in 2017 the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank estimated that over two-thirds of Cambodians still live on less than $3 per day; 32 per cent of children under five are stunted.

Cambodia may have travelled far from the days of the Khmer Rouge, but there is still a very long way to go before it can be called a functioning democracy fully observing the rights enshrined in its own Constitution. It is crucial in this environment that civil society organisations are able to function and maintain their commitment to effective change, in the face of considerable odds. And it is also crucial that the international community continues to give its support and commitment to this work, and that close and informed scrutiny of Cambodia continues.

The stories in this book cover the many areas of human rights that people are still trying to achieve in Cambodia, including the rights to live free of violence, to peaceful assembly and association, to separation of powers and an independent judiciary, to fair distribution of wealth, to not be deprived arbitrarily of property, and to a standard of living adequate to health and well-being. And these stories are told by some truly remarkable individuals, including Thun Saray, a political prisoner under the Vietnamese, who founded the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association (ADHOC) in 1991, and Pung Chhiv Kek (Kek Galabru) who established the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO), first in Paris, in 1991, and then in Cambodia in 1992. These pioneers are still leading the same organisations, and their stories are compelling. They were mentors to others, including Chhith Sam Ath of the NGO Forum on Cambodia, and Koul Panha, executive director of the Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia (COMFREL).

I warmly commend Sue Coffey for gathering and recording the stories of these extraordinary pioneers, and of the younger generation, all of whom are fighting to achieve human rights for all Cambodians. We in the international community should support their endeavours strongly. Without continual pressure and scrutiny from external, independent voices to supplement the courage of those within, Cambodia cannot hope to achieve its potential as a fully functioning democracy—and one that does not just pay lip-service, but fully protects in practice all the human rights of its people.

Professor the hon. Gareth Evans AC, QC

Chancellor, Australian National University

Former Australian Foreign Minister

September 2017

PREFACE

Sue Coffey

I decided to assemble this book following a period of time in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, working as an Australian Government volunteer in 2012–13. I was attached to the NGO Forum on Cambodia, a peak body in Phnom Penh working for human rights for all Cambodians. The Forum worked particularly on land issues; the need for transparency in government, and environment issues, including hydro schemes and their concerning impact on the rivers and people. It was also a touchstone for many other issues, with a member base of over one hundred organisations.

In my work as communications advisor, I helped to publicise some of the many issues that were eroding the rights of Cambodians at the time. People were being evicted from their homes with little or no compensation as a result of land concessions given by the government to private developers.

The forests were being rapidly denuded. Hydro schemes were leading to evictions of those whose livelihoods depended on the rivers, and to alarming levels of river pollution. Transparency in government dealings was, and remains, very low: in 2012 Cambodia ranked 157 out of 174 countries on the Corruption Perceptions Index produced every year by Transparency International (1 being the top ranking). In that year, Myanmar ranked 172, Vietnam 123 and Laos 160. Five years later in 2017, of 180 countries, Cambodia ranked 161, Myanmar had improved dramatically to 130, Vietnam to 107 and Laos to 135. I was shocked by much of what I saw at the time.

In the course of my work I met many remarkable individuals, and I came to understand and admire profoundly the work they were doing to support the struggle for human rights in Cambodia. The idea for this book developed from my conversations with the earliest founders of human rights organisations. They had set up these organisations in the early 1990s with the arrival of the UN, following the disastrous period of the Khmer Rouge in 1975–79, and the Vietnamese–Cambodian war that followed in the 1980s.

Unless these people’s stories were recorded, I felt they might be lost to posterity. These men and women began their work in the dangerous days of the early 1990s, before modern communications technology, and many have had to keep low profiles ever since because of the difficult working environment of Cambodia.

I feel strongly that both international scholars, and new generations of Cambodians should know and understand the struggles of these remarkable people who are still, in some cases, managing the organisations they founded long ago, in the turbulent years of the early 1990s. They have fought for human rights for more than twenty-five years under difficult and often dangerous circumstances, and they are ageing. Many suffered cruelly under the Khmer Rouge and some had been mistreated under the Vietnamese-sponsored government of the 1980s. These harrowing experiences shaped their determination to devote their lives to achieving human rights for all Cambodians.

The founding members of these organisations from the early 1990s include Thun Saray, founder and current President of ADHOC, the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association. This is a major human rights agency that he established in 1991. As a young man, Thun Saray was interred in a labour camp by the Khmer Rouge and was imprisoned by the Vietnamese in the 1980s for his pro-human rights views, only freed when the UN arrived in 1991. I interviewed Thun Saray in Canada in June 2017, where he is in exile, fearing arrest in the current political climate.

Pung Chhiv Kek (Dr Kek Galabru) is the founder and current President of LICADHO, the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights. She founded this organisation in Paris in 1991 and in Cambodia in 1992. It has worked to support human rights in a broad range of areas since that time. She was instrumental in bringing Prince Norodom Sihanouk and Hun Sen together in the late 1980s to try to begin peace negotiations, and has fought a long struggle for human rights in Cambodia.

She is still very much the leader of LICADHO and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her work.

Koul Panha, Executive Director of COMFREL, the Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia, is included. Koul Panha worked as a twenty-year-old volunteer with the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) and came to understand the concept of free and fair elections. He also came to believe that free and fair elections are fundamental to human rights, and founded COMFREL in 1996 to monitor and try to combat electoral abuse in all subsequent elections. He has continued as executive director since 1998 and received an international award for his commitment to working towards free and fair elections in Cambodia. He is widely acknowledged throughout Cambodia and the wider Asian context for his work. During 2018 he also took refuge in exile in Canada, as the political situation deteriorated.

Chhith Sam Ath was one of the original reform group members in 1991. He was twenty-three when he joined Thun Saray in ADHOC, then became the Executive Director of The NGO Forum on Cambodia, working on a broad range of human rights issues. These included fighting forced land evictions, seeking transparency in government, and highlighting the impact of hydro schemes on people living and reliant on the rivers for their livelihoods, especially the Mekong. He then became Executive Director of the World Wildlife Fund and is now the first Cambodian to hold the office of Executive Director of Hagar International, working for the rights of women and children to be free of violence.

Thida Khus, another member of this early group of reformers, is founder and Executive Director of SILAKA, a leading capacity-building organisation in Cambodia. She has received many awards for her work, and is Secretary-General for the Committee to Promote Women in Politics in Cambodia. She has also been the Cambodian President of the ASEAN People’s Forum.

I also interviewed His Excellency Kem Sokha, the recently imprisoned former leader of the main opposition party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party, who has a long history in human rights. He was previously leader of the Human Rights Party in Cambodia, which he founded in 2006, before merging with the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) in 2012. He has fought strongly for human rights issues since the 1980s before leaving Cambodia to avoid arrest. He returned and led the Human Rights Vigilance group in 1991 and the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR) in 2002. I interviewed him just two weeks before he was arrested by Hun Sen’s government and charged with treason. This book contains the last interview he gave before his arrest.

His Excellency Keo Remy, Government Minister for Human Rights, provided the government’s viewpoint on human rights in Cambodia today. Keo Remy has a long history in human rights, before joining the current government, the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). His defence of the government’s current positions on human rights is important to have on record, and relates particularly to the issues of separation of powers, the unequal distribution of wealth, and the recent increasingly inflammatory language and acts of suppression by the government.

Among the younger reformers is Ou Virak, founder and Executive Director of Future Forum, a think tank for the future of Cambodia’s development. His family escaped the Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese occupation, fleeing as refugees to the United States. On return to Cambodia he became President of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR) from 2007, and founded the Alliance for Freedom of Expression in Cambodia, and subsequently Future Forum.

When (former opposition leader) Kem Sokha was jailed in 2005, Virak organised a petition with 250 000 signatures, which he presented to the King as well as the Prime Minister, and led The Rights March, a peaceful march in support of human rights, which attracted thousands, for two consecutive years.

I have included the Venerable Loun Sovath, a Buddhist monk who has fought tirelessly for human rights, especially in support of victims of land dispossession, and who has accordingly been ostracised by Cambodia’s Buddhist hierarchy. He was forbidden to take refuge in any temple in Cambodia until the (unofficial) pagoda where he now lives, on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, took him in. He has been a beacon of hope in human rights to monks and laypeople alike. A documentary on his life, called A Cambodian Spring, has recently been released.

Mam Sonando, founder of Beehive Radio, has long been a campaigner for human rights and is one of the last remaining independent radio broadcasters in Cambodia. Until he was forced to stop by the government, he broadcast Radio Free Asia (RFA), Voice of Democracy (VOD) and Voice of America (VOA). His radio station remains one of the last free voices in Cambodia. At seventy-five he has been jailed three times by Hun Sen for his defence of freedom of speech.

Chak Sopheap, Executive Director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR), is among the youngest appointees—and one of the few women—to head a major human rights agency. She is an extremely active human rights blogger, and with Ou Virak, her former boss, shares the view that the changing demography of Cambodia and new technology will lead the way to human rights achievements in Cambodia. Her work has been acknowledged by former US President Barack Obama.

Am Sam Ath, long-time Monitoring Manager for LICADHO is also included. He has worked tirelessly at grassroots levels to support victims of land dispossession, and on many other issues. He is currently facing a court action by the government due to his attendance at a demonstration on land rights.

Mark Chann Sitha is Coordinator of the Workers’ Information Center, the group that represents Cambodia’s garment workers, one of the largest export industries in the country. She works with a small team to advocate for better conditions for these workers. The garment industry is one of Cambodia’s most important industries, employing more than 700 000 workers (90 per cent female), yet most live in appalling conditions.

Finally, I managed to speak with land activist Tep Vanny, who had been jailed for attending a demonstration to mark the eviction of people in her home area of Boeung Kak Lake, in Phnom Penh. Her situation became a celebrated case internationally, but despite the efforts of the UN, Amnesty and