Sochua Mu to Hillary: Cambodia Needs Your Help

by: Alegre

Sat Apr 18, 2009 at 01:37:57 AM EDT

Cambodia's New War
Sochua Mu, an opposition leader and founder of the women's movement in Cambodia, recently returned to the U.S., lobbying Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to take a firmer line on democracy and human rights in her long-suffering country. "I needed to see the people in the new administration to urge them to re-assess U.S. foreign policy," says Sochua in an interview with The Daily Beast. "Cambodia is a democracy on paper but in reality a dictatorship. Our party activists are murdered because they fight for justice-life is still cheap in Cambodia. Human trafficking, drug trafficking, land grabbing, and forced evictions are all carried out under the nose of the government." ...

In 1998, Sochua ran for election and won a seat in parliament, taking over the women's affairs ministry, which had previously been run by men. In a country that considers women inferior, Sochua mobilized 25,000 female candidates to run for commune elections in 2002. It was a first for Cambodia, and 900 of them were elected.

She negotiated an agreement with Thailand that allowed Cambodian women trafficked as sex workers to return to their home country instead of being jailed. She pioneered the use of TV commercials to spread the word about trafficking to vulnerable populations. Her work in Cambodia also supports campaigns to end domestic violence and the spread of HIV/AIDS, as well as women's workplace conditions. In 2005, she was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for her work against sex trafficking of women.

She ran for and was elected to parliament, and rather than join what she saw as a corrupt government, she joined the opposition party and has been going toe to toe with the prime minister ever since.  Now they're not only corrupt, but they're helping corporations steal land for the natural resources at the expense of the people who own and work the land.  Make the jump for more...

More than 150,000 Cambodians, according to Sochua, were victims of forced evictions and land-grabbing in 2007 alone. Studies have estimated that such concessions cover as much as one-third of the entire area of Cambodia.

"It is now common practice for powerful corporations and government officials to utilize armed forces to push citizens off their rightfully and legally held land," says Sochua. "These evictions are often violent, with soldiers wielding guns, tear gas and Tasers and burning houses to the ground, while citizens are beaten, maimed and arrested."

There are too many reasons for the current government to continue their corrupt practices, and little chance that governments or private donors will hold them accountable for their many human rights violations.  Aid agencies can demand transparency and improvements in human rights, but as Sochua says, that won't happen without regime change.  

"That can only happen when we have a real election that is free and fair," she says. "The West should insist on that, otherwise all the aid they have poured into Cambodia will not work".

From what I've been reading, the aid has little chance of getting to the people who actually need it.  We might as well be pouring it down the sink for all the good it will do the people of Cambodia.