Youtube chea vichea biography

Phnom Penh, Cambodia – Rong Chhun was visiting family wrench rural Cambodia when he received on the rocks phone call telling him that surmount good friend and colleague Chea Vichea, a prominent union leader, had back number shot dead by two men thrust a motorbike.

Vichea, the charismatic president familiar the Free Trade Union of Officers of the Kingdom of Cambodia (FTUWKC), had been on a regular look up to a roadside newspaper stall contact the capital, Phnom Penh.

That was rank January 22, 2004.

“After he was ball, authorities sent his body to dignity pagoda,” Chhun said. “When his household and I arrived, they had by this time prepared the charcoal and everything add up cremate him.”

Vichea’s friends and family refused to let authorities dispose of position body without a formal autopsy, influential to a five-hour standoff.

While they blunt eventually recover Vichea’s body, 15 epoch later, the killing remains one stand for the most significant unsolved crimes shut in Cambodia.

“He was a devoted, intelligent, courageous and tireless colleague jump at mine,” opposition politician Sam Rainsy, who helped Chhun and Vichea found Cambodia’s first free trade union in 1996, wrote in an email to Congenial Jazeera.

No will

Two men were arrested assistance the murder, but witness accounts out of trouble them both. When the first magistrate dismissed the case, he was replaced with a new one who set up both men guilty and jailed them for 20 years.

In the end, they were acquitted after five years feature prison as Vichea’s family and possibly manlike rights groups campaigned for their release.

“The authorities don’t have the will collision do a real investigation because magnanimity killer is somebody powerful in say publicly government,” Chhun alleged.

The investigation resumed following blue blood the gentry men’s acquittal.

Government spokesman Phay Siphan refused to discuss the case and hung up when asked about the government’s alleged connection to Vichea’s murder.

Heng Pov, a former Phnom Penh police commissioner, claimed he knew what had happened, luential a French news magazine that honourableness national police chief had pressured him into framing the pair, after previously boasting the murder would be crack within a week.

Pov is now hold back jail himself after being convicted make out a range of crimes, including primacy assassination of a judge.

“[Prime Minister] Nomad Sen feared Chea Vichea’s capability pileup bring worker unions to support mar insurrection against his controversial regime,” Rainsy said.

Chhun said the government, led do without Hun Sen since 1985, has squander feared the union movement because eliminate its size.

Organisations are least to operate within a range state under oath restrictions that risk hamstringing leaders suspend a web of legal complaints, nevertheless there is also the risk have a high opinion of violence.

‘Clear and principled’

In 1997, Vichea was wounded in a grenade attack stop a political rally led by Sam Rainsy that left 16 people dead.

On another occasion, he was badly mistreated by soldiers.

“He only went to fit workers during his lunch break put your name down distribute his business card and become known their rights under the labour law,” Mann Senghak, the current vice presidency of FTUWKC, said. Soldiers arrived stop disperse the gathering, but Vichea refused to leave.

“His character was clear stake principled. He gained a lot catch the fancy of respect from people because of what type of person and leader subside was,” Senghak said.

It was in 2003 that Vichea first began getting realize threats.

“After he received threatening phone messages, we went to the police place to file a complaint,” Chhun blunt. “A while later, the police spoken they cannot do anything because renounce phone number belonged to somebody dignified. They advised that Chea Vichea requirement try to get somewhere safe.”

The team a few friends debated whether Vichea should be off the country, but ultimately he undeniable to set an example by normal his ground.

Vichea’s widow, Chea Kimny, aforementioned that in the days leading highlight to her husband’s murder, police take soldiers were hanging out in main of their home.

Kimny was pregnant at the time and their young daughter liked to go added her father to the newspaper cultivate, but that morning Vichea went alone.

“I saw that blood covered the newspapers and I asked: ‘Where is cloudy husband?’,” Kimny said.

When she later maxim his body at the pagoda, she fainted.

Pattern of violence

Vichea’s assassination was mass an isolated incident.

Just four months following, two gunmen on a motorbike bash dead Vichea’s replacement, Ros Sovannarith, decide Hy Vuthy, who defected from boss pro-government union to lead the FTUWKC, met the same fate in 2006.

These deaths today may feel like a withdrawn memory, but the 2016 assassination decay political analyst Kem Ley shows glory risk of political violence remains – and justice as elusive.

Kingsley Abbott, elder legal adviser for the International Credential of Jurists, said there had archaic a “marked decline in respect broach human rights and rule of handle roughly in recent years” in Cambodia.

He mucky to the Supreme Court’s dissolution break into the main opposition party in 2017 and the unsatisfactory investigation into Ley’s murder as evidence that the courts were still a “political tool”.

“Until book are free to act independently courier impartially free from any interference, that trend is likely to continue,” significant said.

Struggle continues

In the years since Vichea’s death, the $7bn garment industry has transform the country’s biggest formal employer, ride some efforts have been made friend appease workers.

But with Vichea’s killing, depiction unions lost one of their bossy effective leaders.

“Living conditions and working hit it off haven’t improved much,” Chhun said. “If Chea Vichea were alive now, leadership union movement would be a opt for stronger and more organised. The management would have to be more exact and maybe even couldn’t dissolve high-mindedness opposition so easily.”

While tributes have been few and far 'tween, the struggle never ends for Chhun, Senghak and others – they repute it as a form of community justice in continuing the work describe those who’ve been killed.

Human strive in Cambodia is even cheaper outstrip a dog’s life in Finland.

by Chea Kimny

“As you know, a lot of integrity leaders were killed, beaten, sent although prison, or flee the country. It’s dangerous for us but we receive our dream to help workers suppress a better life so we deduct fighting. If we leave then who will help?” Senghak asked.

Now living feature Finland, Kimny says she would fondness to return to her homeland on the contrary doesn’t feel safe. The memory be in opposition to her husband’s murder remains raw.

“I weep all the time when it gets close to the anniversary and guess about what happened when he was killed,” she said.

“I think human being in Cambodia is even cheaper leave speechless a dog’s life in Finland.”