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| Breed of mass murderers |
June 11, 2012
Contributors: Rathana Am
Source: http://www.humanrights.asia/news/ahrc-news/AHRC-ART-047-2012
In Cambodia, you can criticize the government openly, but tomorrow you will be murdered or put in jail. This is such a coward action of the Cambodian government because they do not even dare to confront criticisms.
Upon arriving in Germany, I saw that the roads are very clean, quiet with very little traffic jam. At that moment, my expression was, "Wow!" This is a developed country, and everything is so organized and clean. On the streets, there were few people walking and during my first week there, I did not see any beggars. I thought to myself, "This is such a rich country with no poverty". However, after talking with women in Courage, I got to know that there is in fact, hidden poverty in Germany. So I tried to look out for poor people in Germany but I could not identify them because to me, their skin and faces all looked the same.
I used to think that all the people in Germany have decent lives and jobs and they do not need to think about what they will have for food the next day. However, I saw it really clearly when I visited a free soup-kitchen. There were many people and mostly, old and middle age that came for their free lunch. In Germany, if the people did not have anything to eat, at least some of them get free food in these soup-kitchens. However, in Cambodia, as well as in Bangladesh, if people do not have money to buy food, they will have to starve or beg in the streets. They know it is because of the corruption in their countries that they have to live in poverty. However, they do not want to go against their governments or ask their governments to be more responsible for the people. Poor people in my country, Cambodia, they do not know much about politics, so it is hard for them to organize themselves or to go against the government.
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| Chea Phalla, a Cambodian maid rescued from abuse in Malaysia. Her jaw was broken by her employers |
For young Cambodians, if they cannot find jobs, they will migrate legally or illegally to neighboring countries such as, Malaysia or Thailand. They will find ways to escape from their poverty rather than confront the reality directly, so it is really hard for them to go on strike or ask the government to give them jobs or be responsible for their unemployment. It is very funny to me that the Cambodian government promises our people that it will find them employment abroad as a solution to our joblessness. Now the Cambodian government is working with South Korea, Malaysia, Qatar and other Arab states to send laborers to these countries. By doing this, the government can say blindly that it has reduced youth unemployment rate in Cambodia. The government does not however, take responsibility for our migrant workers at all. They do not care about the condition of our workers in the foreign land. There were many cases that Cambodian domestic workers who work in Malaysia were tortured and working in sweatshop-like condition. They do not have rights. In fact, some of them were used like slaves or machines.
There was a student's revolution against the brutal dictatorship of the government before the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. Even now, we are still living under the dictatorship; still there is no revolution. Trade union leaders and journalists were murdered, still there is no reaction and people have become even more scared about taking actions.
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