Nascent Group Holds First Protest

By Chiep Mony, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
16 May 2008

Click here to listen to the program in Khmer

The Independent Democracy of Informal Economy Association, or IDEA, held its first protest as an organization Friday, gathering villagers near the Thai border to demand the lower cost of goods and fuel.

It did not go smoothly.

Police surrounded about 100 protesters in Banteay Meanchey province’s Poipet commune, preventing them from amassing an expected 500 supporters of tuk-tuk drivers, cart-pullers, porters and shop vendors, IDEA Director Von Pov said.

The protesters had planned a 1 kilometer march, he said. They managed only 200 meters. They’d planned to use loudspeakers, but were not allowed.

Banteay Meanchey Police Chief Hun Hean said the group was protesting without permission—a claim Von Pov denies.

“We prohibited,” the police chief said, but we did not pressure their freedom of expression. We just guaranteed traffic safety for the people, vendors and tourists.”

Adhoc rights investigator Sum Chankea called the police action a stifling of free expression.

Poipet: Birth of the first union

07-09-2007
By Nhim Sophal
Cambodge Soir
Translated from French by Luc Sâr

From now on, workers at the Poipet border post have their union. Pov Srey Touch, a beer girl, was elected this Tuesday 04 September as the IDIEA (Independent Democracy of Informal Economic Association) representative. The election was organized in a restaurant due to a lack of appropriate venue. About 100 people came to vote, most of them are poor workers from Poipet, along with representatives of the local authorities. “I will fight against all form of threats, and I will defend the members of the association, and the workers from Poipet,” Pov Srey Touch declared. “We have decided to form a representative office here in order to defend the rights of the workers: porters, mototaxis, beer girls, etc…, who are the daily target of the cops and the custom officials,” Vorn Pov, the president of this association, said. He indicated that his organization now counts 1,360 members in Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, and Poipet. Vorn Pov hopes to expand the establishment of IDIEA. He is thinking in particular about Bavet, a city located near the Vietnamese border, in which commercial and industrial development is in full swing, along with the increasing number of workers who are “unknowledgeable about law and who have no recourse in abuse cases, even if they are flagrant abuses.”