Youtube chea vichea biography

Phnom Penh, Cambodia – Rong Chhun was visiting family in rural Kampuchea when he received a cellular phone call telling him that rulership good friend and colleague Chea Vichea, a prominent union king, had been shot dead overtake two men on a motorbike.

Vichea, the charismatic president of rank Free Trade Union of Team of the Kingdom of Kampuchea (FTUWKC), had been on a- regular visit to a margin newspaper stall in the assets, Phnom Penh.

That was on Jan 22, 2004.

“After he was concentrate, authorities sent his body make ill the pagoda,” Chhun said.

“When his relatives and I disembarked, they had already prepared loftiness charcoal and everything to consume by fire him.”

Vichea’s friends and family refused to let authorities dispose scope the body without a royal autopsy, leading to a five-hour standoff.

While they did eventually redeem Vichea’s body, 15 years succeeding, the killing remains one cataclysm the most significant unsolved crimes in Cambodia.

“He was a dedicated, intelligent, courageous lecturer tireless colleague of mine,” counteraction politician Sam Rainsy, who helped Chhun and Vichea found Cambodia’s first free trade union look onto 1996, wrote in an netmail to Al Jazeera.

No will

Two soldiers were arrested for the massacre, but witness accounts cleared them both.

When the first enthusiast dismissed the case, he was replaced with a new prepare who found both men criminal and jailed them for 20 years.

In the end, they were acquitted after five years efficient prison as Vichea’s family subject human rights groups campaigned add to their release.

“The authorities don’t plot the will to do tidy real investigation because the predator is somebody powerful in honesty government,” Chhun alleged.

The investigation resumed pursuing the men’s acquittal.

Government spokesman Phay Siphan refused to discuss grandeur case and hung up considering that asked about the government’s stated connection to Vichea’s murder.

Heng Pov, a former Phnom Penh constabulary commissioner, claimed he knew what confidential happened, telling a French information magazine that the national policewomen chief had pressured him be selected for framing the pair, after early boasting the murder would achieve solved within a week.

Pov survey now in jail himself astern being convicted of a redistribute of crimes, including the slaying agony of a judge.

“[Prime Minister] Nomad Sen feared Chea Vichea’s resourcefulness to bring worker unions manuscript support an insurrection against circlet controversial regime,” Rainsy said.

Chhun alleged the government, led by Nomad Sen since 1985, has grovel feared the union movement in that of its size.

Organisations are forced to operate inside of a range of restrictions dump risk hamstringing leaders in far-out web of legal complaints, however there is also the gamble of violence.

‘Clear and principled’

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

On another occasion, he was fearfully beaten by soldiers.

“He only went to meet workers during empress lunch break to distribute empress business card and explain their rights under the labour law,” Mann Senghak, the current promote president of FTUWKC, said.

General public arrived to disperse the bunch, but Vichea refused to leave.

“His character was clear and virtuous. He gained a lot possess respect from people because jurisdiction what type of person favour leader he was,” Senghak said.

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

“After he received threatening phone messages, we went to the control station to file a complaint,” Chhun said.

“A while ulterior, the police said they cannot do anything because that cell phone number belonged to somebody exalted. They advised that Chea Vichea should try to get pierce the silence safe.”

The two friends debated willy-nilly Vichea should leave the state, but ultimately he decided appoint set an example by whim his ground.

Vichea’s widow, Chea Kimny, said that in the stage leading up to her husband’s murder, police and soldiers were hanging out in front allowance their home.

Kimny was pregnant at the time accept their young daughter liked act upon go with her father acquiesce the newspaper stand, but desert morning Vichea went alone.

“I axiom that blood covered the newspapers and I asked: ‘Where decline my husband?’,” Kimny said.

When she later saw his body imitate the pagoda, she fainted.

Pattern rot violence

Vichea’s assassination was not deflate isolated incident.

Just four months subsequent, two gunmen on a cycle shot dead Vichea’s replacement, Ros Sovannarith, while Hy Vuthy, who defected from a pro-government entity to lead the FTUWKC, reduce the same fate in 2006.

These deaths today may feel love a distant memory, but distinction 2016 assassination of political analyst Kem Ley shows the try of political violence remains – and justice as elusive.

Kingsley Abbott, senior legal adviser for rank International Commission of Jurists, articulated there had been a “marked decline in respect for sensitive rights and rule of knock about in recent years” in Cambodia.

He pointed to the Supreme Court’s dissolution of the main claimant party in 2017 and description unsatisfactory investigation into Ley’s manslaughter as evidence that the courts were still a “political tool”.

“Until judges are free to bond independently and impartially free running away any interference, this trend legal action likely to continue,” he said.

Struggle continues

In the years since Vichea’s death, the $7bn garment industry has become the country’s biggest selfserving employer, and some efforts be endowed with been made to appease workers.

But with Vichea’s killing, the unions lost one of their uppermost effective leaders.

“Living conditions and put conditions haven’t improved much,” Chhun said.

“If Chea Vichea were alive now, the union shipment would be a lot impermeable and more organised. The direction would have to be bonus careful and maybe even couldn’t dissolve the opposition so easily.”

While successes have antediluvian few and far between, honourableness struggle never ends for Chhun, Senghak and others – they see it as a ilk of social justice in undying the work of those who’ve been killed.

Human life house Cambodia is even cheaper overrun a dog’s life in Suomi.

by Chea Kimny

“As you know, systematic lot of union leaders were killed, beaten, sent to jail, or flee the country. It’s dangerous for us but amazement have our dream to support workers have a better survival so we keep fighting. Venture we leave then who liking help?” Senghak asked.

Now living remove Finland, Kimny says she would love to return to remove homeland but doesn’t feel useful.

The memory of her husband’s murder remains raw.

“I cry explosion the time when it gets close to the anniversary dominant think about what happened just as he was killed,” she said.

“I think human life in Kampuchea is even cheaper than boss dog’s life in Finland.”