Sadly, innocent, unarmed Cambodians were killed during
a peaceful demonstration lately. Based on Human Rights Watch, protestors
peacefully protested. But they are celebrating a party in the evening and
everyone almost went home, the government force came in and hit them violently.
And that the clash broke up; many injures and about 4 get killed.
Five people were shot dead and more than 20 injured,
most suffering gunshot wounds, when military police officers opened fire with
AK-47 assault rifles during clashes with protesters armed with stones, sticks
and crude Molotov cocktails on Veng Sreng Street in the heart of the garment
factory zone in Phnom Penh’s Pur Senchey district on Friday.
Said local rights group Licadho, the killings
represent terrible state violence against civilians and innocent people. In 15
years this is one of the single worst incidents ever to hit the country’s key
garment industry, which employs more than 600,000 people in hundreds of mostly
foreign-owned firms.
Garment factory workers went strike peacefully to
increase their wage to around 160 USD. They did not expect such horrible
response from the government which led to deaths and injuries of many peaceful
strikers in the capital, the heart city of the Cambodia Kingdom.
Violence in the Veng Sreng Street area was erupted in
late Thursday night when reportedly some youths intended to block roads and set
fire to some car tires nearby in an intention to call for freedom of detentions
of 15 strikers, union leaders and monks by members of the paratrooper 911
Brigade at the Yakjin garment factory, also in Pur Senchey district.
At that time, it was around 2:00 amp of Friday
morning, there were hundreds of police and military police tried to quell the
unrest but they unsuccessful stopped it, said Licadho officers in its
statement. There were up to 2,000 “mixed security forces” had gathered in the
area by the time shooting broke out around 10 a.m Friday.
Since early in the morning, hundreds of young workers
including men and women stood behind make-shift barricades in the middle of
street namely Veng Sreng, which they had made from wooden market stalls and
metal street signs, and from where they hurled stones at the military police.
Many of the rioting youths had crude Molotov cocktails, though none appeared to
hit the military police lines.
Till around 9:00 a.m. in that morning there were two
military helicopters flew over the protest site and another. Then at 9:30 a.m.
hundreds of military police officers who marched at front of the protesters near
the Canadia Industrial Park were ready to march. But the clashes almost went up
to 100 decree Celsius.
At around 10:00 a.m. in that morning is when the fire
was opening. Under a barrage of stones thrown by more than 100 protesters, the
military police opened fire around 10 a.m., shooting hundreds of bullets at the
demonstrators, including firing at the upper balconies of buildings where
protesters were standing and hurling objects.
This was the tragic history of killing and violence
after the country was set on peaceful process for about 20 years. The human
rights situation which was supposed to get much improved the end of the fiscal
year rather turns down.
Till today, innocent civilians and many peaceful
strikers can’t reach their demands. They rather lost their love ones and are
awaiting for justice. However, hope of much improve working condition, wages
and other kinds of salary became less and less visible for garment factory
workers in the whole country. No one knows for sure if all workers will get
protected by the factories and the government. Perhaps the next national
election that will be taken place in 2018 answer all of these problems.
