Turkey- Cambodia: Workers' convictions upheld over fatal strike

2/4/2016 12:22:24 PM

(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) A Cambodian court rejected Thursday appeals filed by 13 workers charged over their involvement in garment factory strikes two years ago which turned fatal after security forces shot five people dead.

The workers were among hundreds who thronged on Phnom Penh’s Veng Sreng boulevard in Jan. 2014 in strikes held to protest against what unions said was an insufficient $100-a-month minimum wage.

Between Jan. 2 and 3 of that year 23 workers unionists and rights activists were rounded up and detained on charges that included causing intentional violence and the destruction of property.

The case against them was met with disdain from civil society with rights group Licado saying Thursday that it was “characterized by a total absence of fair trial rights and a clear lack of judicial impartiality”.

All 23 workers had ultimately been found guilty and received mixed sentences in May 2014 but these were suspended.

Licadho also said Thursday that the Court of Appeal upheld the convictions of the 13 whose appeals it was considering.

“The appeal hearing held on January 27 2016 was conducted in the absence of the defendants and their lawyers who had been denied a request to delay the hearing in order to inform defendants” it added.

“Plaintiffs – comprised of mixed police and military police forces – claimed that state forces had used only wooden batons and tear gas during the lethal clampdown in defiance of witnesses and footage showing their use of live ammunition.”

According to Licadho the other 10 workers and activists have also appealed their convictions but a hearing has been “delayed indefinitely”.

In addition the rights group decried the fact that although authorities had used live ammunition on the striking workers “no one has yet been held accountable to the four deaths dozens of hospitalisations and one disappearance during the two days of state violence which ended a period of mass protest by garment workers and pro-opposition party supporters.”
By Lauren Crothers

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