On March 7, 180 more casino workers were arrested for striking outside the NagaWorld Casino in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Thousands of workers walked off the job in mid-December, demanding higher wages and the reinstatement of several jailed union leaders and 365 workers they say were unjustly fired. According to the Cambodian Chronicle, NagaWorld is owned by a Hong Kong-based company “believed to have connections to family members of Cambodia Prime Minister Hun Sen.”
Officials in the Cambodian capital call the strike “illegal” and have alleged that it’s part of a conspiracy foreign elements to overthrow the government. The recent arrests and others in recent weeks have been attributed to alleged violations of Covid-19 health measures. The workers say they have observed all pandemic safeguards.
Law enforcement transported the strikers to a quarantine center in the city’s suburbs for processing.
“The authorities accuse us relentlessly. I ask where is the will to find a solution for the people who have been exploited by foreign companies? Where is the justice for the Cambodian people?” Miech Srey Oun, a worker who has now been arrested twice, told Radio Free Asia’s Khmer Service.
“The company tried to turn our dispute with the company over to the authorities, even though we, the workers, had a dispute with the employers only, not with the authorities,” she said.
Chinn Usaphea, another striking casino employee, is calling on Hun Sen to step in. “As citizen, I would like to ask the Samdech father Hun Sen to look at his children in NagaWorld, because we need to be stable in the workplace and to have unions in the workplace,” she said.
“He should tell the relevant ministries to stand neutral to encourage the NagaWorld employers to come out and deal with their grieving staff to end this long-standing dispute,” she said.
Ny Sokha, president of the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association, told RFA, “This depends on the will of the government to solve the problem. That requires will of the government to uphold justice for the workers, who need help from the government.”
As one of the largest casinos in Phnom Penh, NagaWorld had a total of over 8,000 workers before the strike. The number has been reduced to slightly over 6,000 after the cutbacks that caused the strike.
