Cambodia: Covid-19 Used to Justify Crackdown on Union

February 15, 2022 Cambodia Crime & Legal

The Cambodian authorities should immediately stop abusing public health measures to repress workers’ right to strike and other basic rights, Human Rights Watch said today.

Since the Labor Rights Supported Union of Khmer Employees of NagaWorld (LRSU) went on strike in December 2021 to call for the reinstatement of workers laid off earlier in the year, Cambodian authorities have arbitrarily arrested, detained, and prosecuted union activists. Most recently, the authorities have sought to justify these criminal charges as Covid-19-related measures. On February 5, 2022, the police arrested six union members at Phnom Penh’s NagaWorld casino as they left a Covid-19 testing site and baselessly charged three of them with obstructing the government’s Covid-19 efforts.

“The Cambodian authorities are stooping to new lows by bringing criminal charges in the guise of public health measures to end a strike,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The government’s persecution of union activists appears aimed at blunting the growing unity and strength of Cambodia’s union movement and their support for the NagaWorld strikers.”

On February 4, Cambodia’s Health Ministry ordered several hundred workers engaged in a strike action outside the NagaWorld casino to take a Covid-19 test, after one striking union member (who had last participated in the strike on January 15) tested positive. The authorities said that anyone who tested negative would have to self-isolate for seven days, and that if they tested positive, they would be sent to a Covid-19 treatment center. Between February 5 and 6, over 400 protesting workers appeared as ordered at the designated testing site on Phnom Penh’s Diamond Island (Koh Pich). Since the strike began, protesters have protected themselves and others by wearing masks and maintaining social distancing.