LUFFOI.COM

8 February 2012
Last updated at 12:46 ET

By Guy De Launey
BBC News, Phnom Penh

A human flood enters Cambodia’s clothes factories every day

The sky is still dark when the flood starts. It begins with a trickle, a handful of young people walking to work in the concrete landscape of Vattanac Industrial Park in a dusty corner of Phnom Penh.

But suddenly, just as the sun rises, the wide access road running between the factories on either side is awash with a tide of thousands.

They arrive on trucks jam-packed with dozens standing on the flatbed, or perched on wooden trailers pulled behind motorbikes. As they disembark, the scene is reminiscent of a pre-match football crowd, everyone walking with purpose to a common destination.

The women wear headscarves, the much smaller number of young men sport baseball caps. All have ID cards swinging around their necks, identifying the factories they work for.

For the rest of the day they will take their places at sewing machines, steam irons and sorting tables, producing clothes for some of the world’s best-known labels: Gap, HM, Adidas, Puma.

Fading charm?

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It’s difficult for me to afford food and rent for a place to live”

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Sok Asry
Garment factory worker

From a standing start in 2000, the garment industry has grown to the point where, at peak periods, more than 400,000 people work in the factories.

It is the country’s biggest employer and key export earner. And the cash which workers send home to their families has helped to improve the quality of life in rural provinces.

But now there are signs that a garment factory job is losing some of its allure. The industry recently admitted that as many as 50,000 recent vacancies had gone unfilled.

Increasing numbers of young people are willing to take their chances as migrant workers in other countries.

Even though there are reports of mistreatment of domestic staff in Malaysia and fisheries workers in Thailand, they are balanced against the financial rewards – and the money usually wins.

‘Difficult to afford’

One of the main reasons the workers are turning their backs on the sector is the complaint that wages have not kept pace with the rising cost of living.

As they stop to grab breakfast at the food stalls – noodle soup or pork and rice, costing just 25 cents (16p) – outside the factories, many workers say even that is more than they can afford these days.

“It’s difficult for me to afford food and rent for a place to live,” says 25-year-old Sok Asry, as she heads towards the factory gates.

Garment factory workers in Cambodia have gone on strike in recent months, demanding higher pay

“If they could increase the wage to more than $100 (a month) that would be great,” says her 27-year-old colleague, Eam Him.

The minimum wage guarantee has long been part of Cambodia’s strategy for the garment industry. It currently stands at $61 per month, though standard allowances raise that to more than $70 for all employees.

That is one part of a range of safeguards designed to prevent the exploitation of workers. Among other provisions, the Labour Law guarantees union rights, prohibits the use of underage workers and allows nursing mothers to take breastfeeding breaks.

A monitoring programme overseen by the International Labour Organisation makes sure that factories follow the rules.

These measures have made Cambodia enormously attractive to buyers from big-name companies looking to source clothes untainted by association with the kind of sweatshop labour which attracts consumer boycotts.

‘People’s tribunal’

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If wages were increased without any relevance or linkage to other factors, that’s going to be detrimental”

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Ken Loo
Garment Manufacturers’ Association

Salaries were also the concern of a “people’s tribunal”, an informal event organised by unions and rights organisations to look into the workers’ concerns.

After hearing from workers and buyers alike, it declared that a garment worker’s minimum pay no longer represented a living wage.

The Asia Floor Wage Alliance – a union-based group which campaigns for fair pay across the region – reckons that $281 a month would represent a living wage for the average Cambodian garment factory worker.

That would be a four-fold increase on the current minimum, and – according to industry representatives – would pose a major problem for the factories.

“If wages were increased without any relevance or linkage to other factors, that’s going to be detrimental,” says Ken Loo, the general secretary of the Garment Manufacturers’ Association of Cambodia.

“If there was a direct correlation to productivity, and wages increased because of that increased productivity, then everybody would be better off.”

The industry is undoubtedly caught in a delicate balancing act. Buyers may be keen on Cambodia’s image as an ethically sound production base. But they still put pressure on the factories to keep their prices low, and the owners are keenly aware that other countries offer cheaper options.

The UK-based pressure group Labour Behind The Label hopes that big name buyers will work together to reach agreement on living wages – and accept that the price they pay may have to rise.

But that would depend on the willingness of consumers around the world to spend more on their clothes. Given the current world economic situation, such altruism may be in short supply.

Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/business-16940455

The author would like to acknowledge the assistance of Jessica Portillo and Muoy You with the research, writing, and editing of this essay.

Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius writes it’s not the thing itself that passively defines us but our active reaction to the thing. In Cambodian artist Khin You’s case, the thing is the horrific, systematic, and wide-scale atrocities wrought by the Khmer Rouge’s campaign of social engineering and genocide from 1975-1979. His reaction is a powerful, courageous, and bold body of work that bears mute witness to both the campaign and its aftermath.

This reaction takes the form of unforgettable images. Oppressed women — a mother about to lose her newborn son to academies created to nurture good Communists; a woman that must assume multiple identities, symbolized by masks, in order to survive; an illiterate woman who sits on a pile of books like a piece of furniture. It can take the form of images of birds, once-free and now caged. And it can take the form of images of limp, lifeless scarecrows. The result is a startling, little-seen body of work that embodies freedom as a perpetual on-and-off-again condition that must be earned. Khin’s paintings don’t bristle with freedom, they bristle with the conditions that spur one to fight for freedom. Is the brush mightier than the sword? Here it is.

Dispassionate and world-weary, the work quivers with contrasts: inside/outside (Untitled – We Are Going to Pray 2), material/psychological (Caged Pigeons), affection/ennui (Woman with Baby), faces/masks (The Sisters). These contrasts describe the stark, black-and-white choices available to the Cambodian people: acquiesce or die. The figures appear as if they’re about to vaporize. The scarecrows (Untitled – Woman Scarecrow 1 and Untitled — Woman Scarecrow 2) serve as perfect metaphors for the beleaguered Cambodian people — inert, propped up, and filled with straw. One wonders if they’re meant to scare off peace doves.

The pictorial space is flat and claustrophobic, all the better to bear testimony. Because it’s narrow, it compresses the drama and suggests options, viz., none. Figures are splashed up against the picture plane; this forces the viewer to focus on the furious, staccato brushstrokes etched into the viscous, roiling surface like someone’s fingernails in soil as they’re dragged away against their will. Surprisingly, the compositions are balanced. Though Khin anchors the spectral ghost-like figures with triangles (pietas) and intersecting rectangles (crucifixes), their design doesn’t so much suggest ecclesiastical order as to allude to the persistent — and eternal — anxiety and hopelessness described by the brushstrokes. To descents (Think Rogier van der Weyden) from the crosses.

Sometimes the colors are literal: care for the red child in Untitled – Woman with a Red Baby, is about to be transferred from its mother to a Khmer Rouge Communist indoctrination school; the mother is spectral ghost-white, as per her recent childbirth as well as from her upcoming separation. Sometimes the colors are symbolic: the red in the same piece can symbolize forces fiendish and infernal. The figures are elongated and stylized, not dreamy but nightmarish, akin to those from Picasso’s Blue Period. The twine suggests bondage and death (handcuffs, a noose) as well as the psychological links (a mother to a child, a figure to its alter ego) that, for better or worse, bind together the figures, the country, and the culture.

Khin You serves as a Kilroy was here sentinel to observe and document the existential life in Cambodia in the late Seventies. His work to questions the inalienable right to individual and collective freedom. Yes, it answers, freedom is a Right of Man, but, as shown here, it doesn’t come without a cost. Even against overwhelming odds, it’s the Sisyphean gesture (In You Khin’s case, it’s gestural), if nothing else, which matters. Whether it involves Southeast Asia or the Middle East, the second decade of the 21st century or centuries before, the story must be told of those who, having survived totalitarian rule, can inscribe it on our cultural subconscious. Though the work offers an experience horrifying to conceive or envision (Imagine what it was like to live through), it’s also presents a catharsis, reminding us of the ever-necessary, ever-vigilant scramble to uphold freedom in all its iterations.

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Khin You was born on March 2nd, 1947 to a family of farmers in the Kampong Cham province of Cambodia. Here is where he developed to be an artist. His uncle painted Buddhist scenes in local temples and later became his nephew’s inspiration to become an artist.

In 1973, he graduated from Royal University of Fine Arts with a concentration in Interior Architecture and received a scholarship to study in France at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Luminy, Marseilles (School of the Fine Arts of Luminy, Marseilles). He studied 3D decoration and spent his time painting portraits (which were sometimes commissioned) and the landscapes around Marseilles.

While he was still in France, the Khmer Rouge overran Cambodia. In 1975 he won first prize for a graphic design in a nationwide competition organized by the French Ministry of Culture. That same year, he married Muoy You. In February 1977 they went to Sudan, where she got a job teaching French at the University of Khartoum and where their son, Setthivoine, was born. Khin worked as an architect and continued painting; he exhibited at The French Cultural Center, Hilton Hotel, and private homes.

In April of 1978, Khin and Muoy had their second son, Tiesda. They remained in Sudan until June 1979. From September to June 1981, he was an architect for the Aménagement de la Vallée de Bandama, an Ivorian Coast governmental project in cooperation with France to build new villages for people in this vallée. His painting’s persistently expressed his sad yet angry outlook towards the horrific massacre occurring in his country, but it wasn’t until August 1981, when he and his wife went to a refugee camp in Thailand, to bring Muoy’s sister and brother-in-law to France, did they directly hear what happened in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge regime.

In September 1981, he became the architect with the Ministry of Education in Qatar. After the Khmer Rouge was ousted, a civil war rose with the Vietnamese troupe that now occupied Cambodia. Still with blood-stained hands, the Khmer Rouge was recognized as the representative of Cambodia at the United Nations. Khin and Muoy could not return to their country because of the disastrous conditions it was in; no food, no schools, no hospitals, and with two young children these were not surroundings to live in. This exile was reflected through the symbols of confinement seen in his paintings at this time. In 1982, during a summer in France, his daughter Kanika was born and three years later, his youngest son Tevong was born in Qatar. In September 1999, he headed to England, where he settled in Twickenham, near London. There he befriended local artists and was especially inspired by Indian artist Mali to begin one of his now signature attributes, the use of strings on his canvas. While in London, Khin took part in several exhibitions including a solo show at the Riverside Gallery in Richmond, in which women became one of his main themes.

In 2003 his wife returned to Cambodia. He followed her in 2004. During this time, strings continued to impact his paintings depicting the Cambodian society’s corrupt and materialistic nature. He died on August 8th, 2009 in Bangkok.

The exhibition runs until September 29. Museum hours are Monday-Thursday, 10am-5pm, Friday and Saturday, 10am-3pm. Admission is free. PICTURE Cultural Art is located on the first floor of the new Library on the campus of California State University, Dominguez Hills, 1000 East Street, Carson, CA 90747. For more information, visit www.pictureartfoundation.org.

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Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-scarborough/cambodian-artist-khin-you_b_1260436.html?ref=arts

“Mubarak is still ruling in some ways and is still blocking the emergence of a new regime in Egypt,” said Abdullah al-Ashaal, a former deputy foreign minister. “Faiza Abou el-Naga is one of the tools in that.”

This week, 43 employees of nongovernmental organizations, including 19 Americans, were charged as part of an investigation of civil society groups. They included the country directors of the Washington-based National Democratic Institute (NDI) and International Republican Institute (IRI), the latter of which is led in Cairo by the son of the U.S. transportation secretary.

Abou el-Naga, the public face of the inquiry since it was launched by her ministry last year, has defended the probe, which has jeopardized up to $1.5 billion in U.S. aid. She insists that the Egyptian government has a right to expel unlicensed foreign organizations that she says could further destabilize a country reeling from the aftershocks of a revolution. Speaking to a parliamentary committee on Tuesday, she said the government was not trying to stifle civil society, but rather to enforce policies that protect Egypt’s sovereignty.

Senior members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group whose political party won the most seats in parliament, have endorsed the crackdown. Egypt’s ruling generals also appear to be backing it.

But Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on Tuesday called the probe a “dangerous game that risks damaging both Egypt’s democratic prospects and the U.S.-Egyptian bilateral relationship.” In a further sign of strained relations, a delegation of Egyptian military officials cut short its trip to Washington this week, canceling meetings on Capitol Hill.

U.S. officials who backed democratic reform in Mubarak’s Egypt over the past decade had been hopeful that his fall would spell the end of Abou el-Naga’s career and the rigid restrictions the regime placed on American aid earmarked for pro-democracy programs. U.S. trainers and funding would be sorely needed and welcome in the new Egypt, they reasoned, as nascent political parties and those that had been oppressed by the autocratic government geared up for the country’s first free elections.

“When the regime changed, we all thought, Faiza will be gone,” said a senior U.S. official who worked in Egypt, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be interviewed. “Man, were we wrong. She’s more powerful than ever.”

Article source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/architect-of-egypts-ngo-crackdown-is-mubarak-holdover/2012/02/07/gIQAk9mgxQ_story.html?wprss=rss_world

by Jailan Zayan

CAIRO, February 9, 2012 (AFP) – The spectacular uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak a year ago turned the political order upside down in Egypt where the former ruler is now in jail and once-oppressed Islamists in parliament, but for most Egyptians the grievances remain unchanged.

Mubarak’s unshakeable three-decade rule crumbled under the weight of 18 days of unprecedented street protests, forcing the strongman to resign on February 11 last year and prompting a wave of collective euphoria.

The uprising pumped energy into the country: political parties were formed, debates whirred everywhere and power was handed over to a military council that vowed to pave the way to democracy and swiftly return to the barracks.

For the first time in decades, Egyptians felt they had a stake in the country’s future.

“Egypt will never be the same,” proclaimed US President Barack Obama the day Mubarak fell.

But a year later, the jubilation has given way to frustration and anger as political dissent continues to be stifled, corruption still prevails and price hikes pile pressure on households.

“Mubarak may have left, but the two pillars of his regime, a strong police state and an unjust economic system, remain in place,” said Rabab al-Mahdi, a political science professor at the American University in Cairo.

But the very same two factors are what is driving the revolution forward, she told AFP.

Protesters who embraced the military as supporters of the revolution have turned their anger against the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which they accuse of mismanaging the transition and seeking to retain a degree of power.

Demonstrators have been taking to the streets for months to demand the ouster of the military ruler, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, Mubarak’s longtime defence minister who is now in charge of the country.

They accuse the army of human rights violations, violence against protesters and sowing instability to justify its position at the top of the political ladder.

Mahdi concedes there is a long way to go to achieving the goals of the revolution of freedom and social justice but admits “there have been many changes.”

The uprising brought the first court appearance of an autocratic leader toppled by the Arab Spring protests.

Mubarak, his interior minister and six security chiefs are facing trial for their involvement in the killing of protesters during the uprising.

His two sons Gamal and Alaa — symbols of power and wealth– are also behind bars with a host of former ministers and officials on charges of corruption.

It was an epic downfall, with the once absolute ruler reduced to a caged invalid, a scene unthinkable before the January 25 revolution when the mere mention of his health could land an editor in jail.

The first hearing in August saw the ailing 83-year-old Mubarak wheeled into court on a stretcher, drawing a collective gasp from Egyptians who watched the fall of the “Pharaoh” live on television.

His arch foes, the Muslim Brotherhood — long banned and and whose members suffered a widespread and sometimes brutal crackdown at the hands of the interior ministry– formed the Freedom and Justice Party and now control almost half the seats in parliament.

The more hardline Salafi movements, whose adherents were jailed for years, have become new power brokers, with the Al-Nur party coming second in Egypt’s first free and democratic elections that wrapped up in January.

The players may be different, but the debates in parliament reflect the same concerns as a year ago: the price rise of butane gas, fuel shortages, corruption, police violence.

“Much has changed, but more remains the same,” said analyst Seif Abdul Shahid in a recent column in the state-owned Ahram Online website.

“The real issue is not taking power, but defanging power. When the people called for the end of the system, it meant more than persons,” he wrote.

The new Egypt has also been gripped by instability since Mubarak’s omnipresent and hated police force disappeared from the streets during the uprising.

Street clashes between police and protesters, sectarian violence, attacks on a pipeline that supplies gas to Israel and armed robberies have only further infuriated Egyptians.

Activists have called for mass demonstrations and a general strike on Saturday, vowing to keep their unfinished revolution alive.

Article source: http://www.mysinchew.com/node/69915