THOUSANDS OF PHNOM PENH CHILDREN WORK FOR LITTLE OR NO WAGES
Radio Free Asia : The International Labor Organization (ILO) revealed in a recent survey that nearly 28,000 children work in household positions in Cambodia often for seven days a week and for little or no wages, RFA reports. The survey found that 10 percent of children in Phnom Penh between the ages of seven and 17 work in such households. Duties include cooking, cleaning, washing, gardening, or babysitting. Of the 27,950 children comprising this child labor force in Phnom Penh, nearly 60 percent are girls. The ILO also found that 60 percent of the children work an entire day without rest and that 57 percent of them are expected to work seven days a week. The ILO issued a statement with the survey saying the use of children “for household work is becoming increasingly common, due to a mixture of economic and social changes and cultural factors.”
“I have trouble helping these children who are forced to work at homes in Phnom Penh because I rarely receive complaints from children or their families…” Phnom Penh police chief Heng Peou told RFA’s Khmer service. “We have no laws that allow police to enter a home and investigate such matters when we have no evidence to go on. If we hear complaints from the children’s mothers, we can help,” Heng Peou said. About 80 percent of the child workers receive compensation in the form of food, shelter, and education, and often work in relatives’ homes. However, nearly 40 percent of child laborers who attend school drop out and 14 percent remain illiterate. Several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Cambodia, however, are taking steps toward helping reduce the numbers of child laborers.
One NGO, the Cambodian Children Against Starvation and Violence Association (CCASVA), receives financial support from Save the Children Norway. The group is helping Phnom Penh’s working children by paying them wages and allowing them to take breaks for rest and food. “From our research, we see that many of the child laborers come from families that suffer from domestic violence, gambling, alcoholism, and divorce,” CCASVA executive director Phok Bunroeun told RFA. Another NGO called the Cambodian Center for the Protection of Children’s Rights (CCPCR) is working to draw more public attention to the plight of child laborers. “Cambodian children are suffering too much from labor exploitation and sexual trafficking…” CCPCR executive director Yim Po told RFA. “[Child labor] is a big issue we are trying to investigate. … There is no law to protect the children, yet for the families who hire them, they need to respect the rules…” “CCPCR’s problem is that once we receive information about a case of child labor abuse, when we ask the child about the situation, he or she is afraid to talk to us. We can only help if we get clear information…otherwise, it’s very difficult,” Yim Po said. He said many children run the risk of rape, beatings, or starvation when they work in other people’s homes.
Child labor in Cambodia has been an ongoing problem. The U.S. State Department’s 2003 human rights report found that “of children between the ages of 5 years and 17 years, 53 percent were employed…” with “the most serious child labor problems…in the informal sector,” which includes domestic labor.

The New York Times Magazine : Traditionally, militant groups huddle in caves in the mountains, or they blindfold journalists and drive them in circles before depositing them at their leader's jungle hideout. The Cambodian Freedom Fighters (C.F.F.), a militant group dedicated to the overthrow of Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia, on the other hand, meets each Saturday at 6 p.m. in an accountant's office in a strip mall in Long Beach, Calif. When I called Yasith Chhun, the group's leader, he didn't hesitate to invite me to the next meeting. ''You can't miss our headquarters,'' he said. ''It's right next to the bridal shop.'' When I arrived, eight people were seated in the office. The room was crammed not only with Cambodian political paraphernalia but also with stacks of 1040 forms, evidence of Chhun's double life as a tax preparer. One smiling C.F.F. devotee was offering members glasses of fizzy orange soda. Chhun, 47, didn't cut a very imposing figure. His stomach flopped over his slacks, and his bent legs, small head and doughy face made him look more like a bowling pin than a warrior.
Still, a warrior is decidedly what he is. The C.F.F.'s stated goal is to enlist thousands of Cambodians to topple Hun Sen's quasi-authoritarian government by force, creating chaos out of which, the group said, a better government will emerge. ''Hun Sen -- believe it or not -- he's going to get it,'' said one C.F.F. member, a muscular, middle-aged man nearly spitting with rage. ''We are probably the last hope for the 10 million Cambodians.'' Chhun said he has little idea what form of government he plans to replace Hun Sen's with, though he has two guiding principles: he wants to model a new regime as closely as possible on the ideals of the American Republican Party, and he intends to populate the government with lots of accountants. Chhun passed around an attendance sheet so everyone could sign in. After inking the sheet, each member stood up and pledged allegiance to the C.F.F. Then the meeting began in earnest, with one member after another throwing out ambitious, even wild chains of events that might put the group in control of Cambodia. Chhun decided to expand the meeting by phone to include a few members of the C.F.F.'s global network.

The group claims to have hundreds of agents inside Cambodia ready to execute its violent plans, each one known to C.F.F. members by a code of letters and numbers; Chhun admits that the coding system is so complicated that he sometimes loses track of which code represents which agent. He picked up the phone and dialed, trying to reach one of his lieutenants in Southeast Asia. Unfortunately, he had only 34 cents left on his international phone card and couldn't dial out. Frustrated, he rummaged through desks and cabinets, found another card and finally reached a C.F.F. agent in the field, a former Cambodian Navy officer hiding along the Thai border. Speaking in Khmer, Cambodia's language, the officer confidently reported that he had persuaded more than 400 government soldiers to turn against Hun Sen. (Chhun translated for me as the rebel officer spoke.) ''All of them are ready,'' the officer said. ''They're just waiting for my command.'' The speakerphone crackled. ''They take an oath, they swear to God they're with C.F.F. forever. They have the guns, they have the weapons, they have tanks.''
It was impossible to tell for sure whether the agent's report was genuine, exaggerated or just wishful thinking. But it is clear that the C.F.F. isn't kidding around. The group spent two years methodically planning a coup that culminated in an armed assault on Phnom Penh in the fall of 2000, resulting in some of the worst bloodshed in the Cambodian capital's recent history. Now, Chhun said, the group is planning an even bigger assault. ''Next time,'' he promised, ''we will attack the whole country.'' How does a group get away with planning violent attacks overseas from an office in Southern California? According to most Cambodia experts, the C.F.F.'s actions are illegal, contrary to American policy and harmful to Hun Sen's democratic opponents in Cambodia. Yet at least two conservative American legislators who detest Hun Sen have advocated the removal, or even the overthrow, of the Cambodian leader. That position, some believe, has had the effect of helping provide political cover for the C.F.F. Now that the White House has embraced the idea of regime change in Iraq and other rogue nations, the Cambodia hawks are getting a hearing, and the C.F.F. remains free to plot in Long Beach.

Like any major guerrilla attack, the C.F.F.'s November 2000 coup attempt was many years in the making. After fleeing the Khmer Rouge as a teenager in the late 1970's, Chhun sought refuge in the United States in 1982. Like many Cambodians, he maintained ties with his brutalized homeland, returning to assist an opposition party in the early 1990's, when the United Nations oversaw a transition to elected governments. But Chhun grew incensed at repression by Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge officer who used force and violent purges to remain in power after losing the 1993 election. ''When I came back to the States,'' Chhun said, ''I felt that nonviolence cannot do anything to the dictatorship in Cambodia.'' Chhun soon found a channel for his rage. In October 1998, Chhun and several other emigres held a clandestine meeting on the Thai border with 120 Cambodian dissidents. Together they vowed to foment a coup. Chhun returned to America and persuaded Cambodian-American friends to join his nascent organization, the C.F.F. In May 2000, Chhun held a fund-raiser attended by more than 500 people, many of them Cambodian expatriates, on the Queen Mary, the old cruise ship permanently moored at Long Beach.
Attendees raised their right hands and swore to overthrow the Cambodian government. Chhun told them the money they were donating would be used to attack Hun Sen. Through the fund-raisers, Chhun said, the C.F.F. amassed a war chest of roughly $300,000. Money in hand, Chhun and Richard Kiri Kim, a local Cambodian immigrant, recruited 20 or so Cambodian-Americans to travel with them to the Thai-Cambodian border, where they set up a secret base. From there, Chhun dispatched Kim into Cambodia to contact military officers and offer many of them money and positions in a potential new government. In June 2000, Kim and his colleagues brought several officers to the border to meet with Chhun, who organized them into units and sent them back to recruit foot soldiers and wait for a signal.

On Nov. 23, 2000, Chhun called Kim from the base on the border and told him to strike the following day. Early on Nov. 24, a team of about 70 C.F.F. agents slipped into the center of Phnom Penh. Armed with B-40 rockets and assault rifles, they moved swiftly toward a compound of government buildings. They attacked the Ministry of Defense and the Council of Ministers, peppering them with fire, then turned their weapons on a local television station and a nearby military base. State security forces engaged the group in a fierce firefight that lasted more than an hour, leaving bullet holes in ministry offices and blood pooled in the street. By daybreak, eight people lay dead. In the wake of the violence, more than 200 people, including Richard Kiri Kim, were arrested by the Cambodian police. Chhun fled to Thailand and then returned to Long Beach to raise more money for the C.F.F., arriving in time for the 2001 tax season. ''I couldn't keep my tax clients waiting,'' he said. Chhun defended his group by claiming he limits his actions in the United States to raising money and planning strategy. But under the Neutrality Act, it is illegal for American citizens on American soil to organize military action against a country with which the United States is not at war. And although Hun Sen has presided over political repression, including using thugs to maim and kill critics, Washington has diplomatic relations with the Cambodian government.
William Banks, an expert on national security law at Syracuse University, explains that the act prohibits even raising money or giving orders for violent attacks from the United States. ''If you're providing the means -- money, weapons, technology, intelligence -- from within the United States, you're violating the law,'' Banks said. (...)
Yet so many parties appear to benefit from Chhun that the United States government probably won't be coming after him anytime soon. Unless, perhaps, the C.F.F. unleashes more violence. In May, the group is holding another big fund-raiser in Long Beach. And not long ago, I sat in Chhun's office as he again made calls to his agents in Southeast Asia to discuss a possible C.F.F. attack. He was particularly excited about the near future, he said, when C.F.F. members will have more free time. ''Many of my other leaders are in accounting,'' he said. ''I have to put off planning attacks until after tax season.''           [ By JOSHUA KURLANTZICK ]
(Joshua Kurlantzick is the foreign editor of The New Republic.)