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Tuesday, 18 September 2012 Claire Knox The Phnom Penh Post
A coalition of women’s groups have lashed out at Malaysia for continuing to endorse a “public morality” clause in the draft ASEAN Declaration on Human Rights.
They claim the clause is subjective and discriminates against women and sexual minorities and should be ditched.
Currently being drafted by the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) behind closed doors, the ADHR is set to be adopted in November, yet at the AICHR’s Second Regional Consultation with Civil Society Organizations, which wrapped up in Manilla yesterday, Malaysia’s representative, Dato’ Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, defended the clause as instrumental in his country’s legislative framework.
Fri, 07 Sep 2012 Writer: Hafiz Noor Shams Selangor Times (Malaysia)
I do hope Cambodia progresses to emerge out of its ancient Khmer predecessor’s shadow. (sic!)
If one looks at various socioeconomic statistics, it is easy to conclude how far behind Malaysia Cambodia is.
Yet superficially, if one landed in Siem Reap in north Cambodia, one would find it hard to differentiate rural Cambodia from rural Malaysia, apart from Khmer writing on the billboards and posters as well as the spoken language.
The homes appeared Malay and the people themselves looked Malay. There were a number of times when a Cambodian spoke to me in Khmer, only to giggle finding out that I did not speak their tongue.
The substantive difference became clearer only once I was in the town of Siem Reap. Most parts of the town were dusty to present a Wild, Wild West impression.
There was clear underinvestment in infrastructure. The statement on infrastructure was true elsewhere as well.
On behalf of her family, we would like to express our sincerest thanks to all individuals, media and authorities who assisted in bringing Phat Sokleang back to her family. Sokleang left her home on the morning of Monday, August 27, 2012 and disappeared for two days. She was found in Tuol Krosang Pagoda, located in Sen Sok District, Phnom Penh on Wednesday afternoon, August 29, 2012. Sokleang is now at home safely in Kampong Siem District, Kampong Cham Province.
As a victim of labor trafficking, Sokleang is not in a proper mental state. She was a normal girl before working as a maid in Malaysia in 2005. Sokleang was 15 years old when she was recruited for domestic work. After only 4 months of employment she returned to Cambodia with horrific mental trauma that has ruled her life for the last 7 years. Barely able to speak or eat and refusing to wear clothes she was tied to her family home for her own safety. After locating her in 2011, CLEC has been helping her family to provide proper medical treatment and rehabilitation. 7 years on, she is receiving treatment from psychological doctors. Sokleang was only one of an estimated 50,000 Cambodian maids in Malaysia.
Cambodian worker return from Malaysia. Photograph: Pha Lina/Phnom Penh Post
Tuesday, 04 September 2012 Sen David The Phnom Penh Post
The recruitment firm HRD Company had allegedly threatened the mother of two sisters working as maids in Malaysia, pressuring her to withdraw her NGO complaint seeking help in repatriating her daughters or risk having all communication with them cut, a rights group said yesterday.
Pov Chhan, 50, from Kampong Cham’s Kampong Siem district, filed a complaint with the Community Legal Education Center on Saturday after the second anniversary of the expiration of her daughters’ contracts, saying she had not heard from them, nor had they returned home.
“[On Sunday], the company called me by phone. They said: ‘You are so poor, if you file a complaint, you will not get any money from us’,” Chhan said yesterday.
“But I really do not want money; I just want my two daughters back home safely. I did not get their salary ever, not even 100 riel.”
Thursday, 30 August 2012 Kim Sarom The Phnom Penh Post
A mother fears her son has died in Malaysia after not having heard from him for months, she said yesterday.
Som Oun is among one of three families from Stung Treng province to have raised concerns with human-rights group Adhoc this week after not being able to contact a family member working in Malaysia.
“I heard that he has died,” Oun said of her son, Kiev Meas, 20, who has been working in Malaysia for two and a half years.
Wednesday, Aug. 29 2012 JEREMY GRANT SINGAPORE — Financial Times
A share-trading system linking key markets in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) is expected to go live next month after regulators approved the launch of a first stage of the project linking the Singapore and Malaysian bourses.
The project, known as the “Asean Trading Link,” is part of a vision by Asean policy makers to unite the capital markets of the 10-member bloc, which has an economy bigger than India’s.
Asean’s capital markets regulators have agreed on a “road map” for integration of the region’s capital markets by 2015. This would ultimately allow the creation of Asean “as an investable asset class,” according to the Singapore Exchange, one of the link’s main backers.
BANGKOK, Aug 24 – A senior Thai military officer on Thursday brushed aside Cambodia’s dissatisfaction over the thorough inspection of Cambodian Muslims entering Thailand, insisting that the measure is necessary as far as national security is concerned.
Maj-Gen Dittaporn Sasa-smit, spokesman of the Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC), said the inspection enables the authorities to know the background of the Muslim arrivals in case of untoward incidents.
“We need to immediately supply them (the Cambodian authorities) with necessary information if asked for,” he said.
Gen Dittaporn said Cambodian Muslims have been entering Thailand at border checkpoints in Sa Kaew province but there has been no report of their involvement in terrorism.
KUALA LUMPUR — Irene Fernandez has no shortage of shocking tales of the abuse and exploitation of foreign domestic workers in Malaysian homes.
One Cambodian woman, who said she was forced to cook, clean and care for children from 5 a.m. until past midnight, told Ms. Fernandez that her employer once tied her hands behind her back and ordered her to leap down a flight of stairs, leaving her with a permanent limp.
Another domestic helper, also from Cambodia, reported that she used to suck the fish bones left on her employer’s dinner plate, because she was only given leftovers to eat.
“It’s so dehumanizing,” Ms. Fernandez said. “To me, it’s just slavery days coming back — and that’s just frightening.”
Domestic migrant maids being held against their will at an SKMM Investment Group training centre in Phnom Penh cry while speaking to reporters from the Post in October last year. The women were freed the following day during a police raid. Photograph: Pha Lina/Phnom Penh Post
Friday, 06 July 2012 Bridget Di Certo and David Boyle The Phnom Penh Post
Complaints of rights violations of migrant workers had increased more than 500 per cent in the first four months of 2012 compared with the same period last year, rights group Adhoc said yesterday.
The number of individual victims of rights violations, mainly migrant workers in Malaysia and Thailand, had increased by nearly 650 per cent, the group said in its report on the situation of migrant workers, obtained by the Post yesterday.
“Forced overwork, little or no rest time, untreated illnesses, torture, severe physical assault, underpayment, threats [of] being jailed, being forced to continue to work illegally and the cut-off of relationships with family members” were the main violations migrant workers suffered, Adhoc said.
Thursday, 05 July 2012 David Boyle and Phak Seangly The Phnom Penh Post
A Cambodian maid in Malaysia has committed suicide, another was allegedly raped by her employer and a third tortured, according to rights groups and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is investigating the cases.
An 18-year-girl is being sheltered at the Cambodian embassy after she was rescued from an employer who allegedly raped her in April and was arrested on Monday, Moeun Tola, head of the labour program and the Community Legal Education Centre said yesterday.
“She was only 16 when she was sent to Malaysia,” he said, adding that she had been sent by the recruitment firm T&P, which has since been shut down following a raft of exploitation and abuse scandals and was “famous for falsifying documents”.
Cambodian maids rescued from Malaysia (Photo: The Phnom Penh Post)
Tuesday, 03 July 2012 Sen David and Bridget Di Certo The Phnom Penh Post
An abused Cambodian maid working in Malaysia has had her day in court – and won.
Men Chan Veasna is the first Cambodian maid to successfully sue her employers in the Malaysian courts, rights groups said yesterday, calling the win a landmark victory for maids struggling for justice at the hands of abusive employers abroad.
The 30-year-old from Kampong Cham province has been stuck in limbo for the past six months since fleeing the home of her Malaysian employer, whom she accused of overworking her and withholding her salary for the duration of her two-year contract.
Last Thursday, the Malaysian Supreme Court ruled in Veasna’s favour in the ongoing court battle between her and her former employer, who had appealed against a negative ruling in the court of first instance.
Tuesday, 03 July 2012 Khouth Sophak Chakrya The Phnom Penh Post
Malaysian authorities arrested a man on Sunday after the family of his 18-year-old Cambodian maid reported him to local and Cambodian NGOs for allegedly raping her, the Community Legal Education Center said yesterday.
Moeun Tola, program manager at CLEC, told the Post he had received a complaint on Friday from the girl’s parents asking the NGO to intervene on their daughter’s behalf.
“She called her parents after she was raped by the husband of her landlady [and employer], and her parents called us to help her,” Tola said. “Then we contacted our NGO partner in Malaysia [rights group Tenaganita] to intervene.”
The 18-year-old victim told the Post yesterday her Malaysian employer’s husband, Liew Fos Ching, had attempted to rape her once before, but gave up when her struggles attracted the attention of another family member.
Kuy Lyda's relatives attend her funeral in Phnom Penh, June 25, 2012. (RFA)
A Cambodian woman who fell ill and died upon returning home may have been mistreated by her Malaysian employer.
2012-06-25
Radio Free Asia
A Cambodian maid who recently returned home from work in Malaysia fell ill and died over the weekend, highlighting ongoing concerns over the treatment of impoverished Southeast Asian women who seek work abroad but are often abused by their employers.
Kuy Lyda, 17, died at a hospital in Phnom Penh on Sunday from complications associated with a stomach ulcer, gastritis, a kidney infection, and an intestinal infection, doctors said.
She had been admitted in May, shortly after returning from Malaysia where she worked as a maid for one year in a bid to provide extra income for her destitute family.
But a labor rights group and Kuy Lyda’s family members suspect the young woman’s health problems were linked to abuse by her employer.
Chheang Nath, 47, cries yesterday as she stands next to the coffin of her 16-year-old daughter, Toch Srey Neth. Photograph: Pha Lina/Phnom Penh Post
‘Beaten, unfed’ teen maid dies
Monday, 25 June 2012 Sen David The Phnom Penh Post
A 16-year-old died at Calmette hospital in Phnom Penh yesterday morning after succumbing to an illness she contracted while working in virtual slavery as a maid in Malaysia, her family said.
Toch Srey Neth signed up to go to Malaysia as a maid through the now-defunct T&P Co when she was only 15 years old.
While there, she was reportedly beaten, under-fed and overworked without pay before being brought home, where she died a few weeks later of “multi-organ failure”, caused by “irreversible septic shock”, according to her death certificate.
“I am mourning my only daughter,” the victim’s mother, Chheang Nath, 47, tearfully told the Post over the sounds of a funeral ceremony. “When we saw that my lovely daughter died at the hospital, we panicked.”
Bun Ly (centre), a 36-year-old trafficking victim who was forced to work on a Thai fishing vessel under slave-like conditions, with other trafficking victims at an Adhoc office yesterday. Photograph: Heng Chivoan/Phnom Penh Post
Friday, 15 June 2012 Sen David The Phnom Penh Post
Human rights group Adhoc released a report on the state of Cambodian migrant workers yesterday, saying that tales of abuse from migrant workers and their families have increased five-fold compared to the same period last year.
Seventy per cent of this year’s 141 complaints concerned domestic workers abroad, Adhoc says, and the government’s moratorium on sending maids to Malaysia may be partially to blame for the spike in incidents.
According to Adhoc president Thun Saray, when recruitment companies closed after the government ban, their former clients were essentially set adrift.
“We noticed [incidents] were increasing, because rights violations against male and female migrant workers in Malaysia have deteriorated even more since the government banned companies from sending workers last year,” he said. "The company is no longer responsible for the workers, so the loss of contact is increasing almost every day.”
A domestic migrant worker returns to Cambodia on Friday from Malaysia. A total of four maids and eight fishermen were repatriated after being forced to work in slave-like conditions. Photograph: Heng Chivoan/Phnom Penh Post
Monday, 11 June 2012 Sen David The Phnom Penh Post
Eight Cambodian fishermen and four Cambodian maids were repatriated from Malaysia on Friday after finding themselves forced to work in slavery-like conditions, despite being promised high-paying jobs there by brokers and recruitment firms.
Koy Kuong, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation, said in a press release on Friday the Cambodian government had co-operated with Malaysian authorities and the International Organization for Migration to return the trafficked victims to Cambodia.
Sin Sokhoun, 42, a fisherman from Kampong Speu province, said he paid 400,000 riels (US$100) to the brokers.
Once a farmer, he was lured abroad by the promise of high salaries, but after his ordeal, he said, he had told his son not to make the same mistake.
“I felt embarrassed when I came back to my homeland, because I was cheated into working,” he said. “We worked every day until night but we did not get a salary.”
Chea Phalla, the Cambodian maid rescued from abuse in Malaysia
2012-06-05 Radio Free Asia
A Cambodian maid is hospitalized after allegedly suffering extensive abuse at the hands of her employers.
A Cambodian maid is recuperating at a hospital in Malaysia after being severely beaten by her employers, highlighting the plight of women from some of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia who seek work abroad, only to find themselves held captive and abused with little recourse.
Chea Phalla, 28, is being treated in a hospital in the capital Kuala Lumpur after having her jaw broken and being tortured by the couple that hired her to clean their home, according to an official with the Cambodian Embassy in Malaysia who met with the victim.
Third secretary at the Cambodian Embassy Chhay Kosal told RFA that Chea Phalla’s employer, hairdresser Tan Mong Huwai, had tried to send her back to Cambodia so that he and his wife, Eng Lay San, could get away with their crime.
“When she arrived at the embassy, her condition was already critical. At first she could barely speak. Her boss slapped her in the face until her jaw was broken,” Chhay Kosal said.
Defence Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi (centre) with the Malaysian team that delivered aid to villagers in Kampung Rakapram in Cambodia on Wednesday. On the left is Cambodia’s mufti, Kamaruddin Yusof @ Sos Kamry. Pic by V. Shuman
04 June 2012 By V. SHUMAN New Straits Times (Malaysia)
EARLY RAYA GIFT: Zahid hands over clothes, generators to Cambodians
KUALA LUMPUR: THOUSANDS of Muslims in Cham district in Cambodia got an early Hari Raya Aidilfitri surprise when they received goodies from a humanitarian team from Ma-laysia on Wednesday.
The team, led by Defence Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, presented clothes, books and generators, worth RM500,000, to residents of Kampung Rakapram and surrounding villages.
Zahid was joined by representatives from Yayasan Dakwah Islamiah Malaysia (Yadim), Polytechnic Education Department employees and reporters, who had been in Phnom Penh for the Asean Defence Ministers' Meeting.
The arrival of the convoy was greeted by more than 1,000 Muslim Cambodians.
Chea Phalla, 28, was tortured by her employers. Photograph: Photo Supplied
Thursday, 31 May 2012 Cassandra Yeap and Phak Seangly The Phnom Penh Post
“It is unspeakable. I pity her. I absolutely have pity on Khmer women when I see such cases”
A Malaysian couple has been charged with causing grievous harm to a Cambodian maid, a rights worker said yesterday, in the latest of a recent string of such prosecutions.
Hairdresser Tan Mong Huwai and his wife Eng Lay Sang, both 36, were charged this week with abusing Chea Phalla, 28, between August 2011 to May in Kuala Lumpur, according to Liva Sreedharan, anti-trafficking program officer at Malaysian NGO Tenaganita.
Chea Phalla had testified in a written statement that her employers had used an iron rod to beat her and forced her to drink her own urine and eat her faeces, Sreedharan said.
“The agency was alerted about the abuse and they got the employer to bring the domestic worker to the embassy. The embassy then brought her to the hospital upon seeing her injuries,” she added.
If found guilty, the couple faces 20 years in prison and a fine or whipping.
