Union leaders gather outside Phnom Penh's Wat Langka to commemorate the 17th anniversary of the murder of unionist Chea Vichea.

More than 70 workers and union leaders gathered outside Phnom Penh’s Wat Langka this morning to demand justice for murdered unionist Chea Vichea, who was gunned down in the street 17 years ago today. The peaceful Buddhist ceremony was shadowed by more than 60 uniformed and plain-clothes police and security forces.

Speaking at the ceremony, Independent Democracy of Informal Economy Association president Vorn Pao called for further investigation into the union leader’s murder, as well as demanding justice for those still facing harassment or imprisoned unjustly. Although two innocent men, Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeurn, were falsely convicted and imprisoned for five years before their sentences were overturned, Vichea’s real killers have never been brought to justice.

Almost two decades after Vichea, the leader of the Free Trade Union of the Workers of the Kingdom of Cambodia, was killed, Cambodia’s pro-worker union leaders continue to face threats to their lives. In February last year, a deputy union leader at a Phnom Penh garment factory was left seriously injured after three masked men on a motorbike beat him on the head with a steel pipe outside his workplace. As in the case of Vichea’s murder, the perpetrators were never arrested.

Despite these threats, Cambodia’s workers continue to fight for their hard-won rights as the nation’s manufacturing sector reels from the economic fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Yesterday, more than 1,000 workers from the Chinese-owned Y&W garment factory in Phnom Penh took to the streets to demand unpaid seniority payments. This morning, hundreds more garment workers from Canteran Apparel Cambodia gathered on Veng Sreng Boulevard to pressure their employer to pay them salaries and seniority payments.