Testimony on Behalf of Chea Vichea for the Launch Announcement Session of the Commission of Inquiry for Cambodia, 23 October 2021

Chea Vichea, was killed because he had the courage and audacity to help his fellow workers organize into a union, demonstrate for fair wages and working conditions, and protest the policies and abuses of the Hun Sen government. His voice and efforts to mobilize and protect workers were silenced. But his vision and his message live on. That is why we are speaking today on his behalf. 

Chea Vichea was assassinated with the likely help and involvement of government agents, back in 2004, while he was buying a newspaper on the street. A Peabody Award-Winning Documentary Film by Bradley Cox, titled “Who Killed Chea Vichea,” found considerable evidence that the Hun Sen government was responsible for the killing. But because the government refused to properly investigate the crime, and actively covered up how the crime was committed, and who the perpetrators really were, we never were given the chance that they demanded for the case to be resolved so that we could receive closure. 

As the film suggests, Chea Vichea was killed because he had worked to establish a strong and active workers rights movement, through the Cambodia Free Trade Union that he founded and headed. His work could not be tolerated by the Hun Sen government, because the union and its activities were seen as a threat to Hun Sen’s power and control that had to be stopped. Criticism of the government, and local opposition to its policies, could not be tolerated, even if these actions were protected by free speech and free association standards in the Paris Peace Accords and many other international human rights instruments. So, Chea Vichea and several other union and worker rights leaders were eliminated or otherwise silenced. 

Over the years, the Hun Sen government did its best to cover up the crime and to prevent justice from being served. Now is the time to shed a strong spotlight on the crime and the government’s cover-up, and to finally have the chance to speak out to demand justice and accountability.   

Chea Vichea’s assassination was not the first or only killing engineered by the government to suppress workers and free speech and free association rights. As the US government’s Federal Bureau of Investigation found in its year-long review of the 1997 grenade attack on a meeting of the political opposition party in Freedom Square, there is a long-standing pattern that the Hun Sen government has followed in suppressing freedom and preventing criticism. In its report released to US Congress, the FBI investigating team found that Hun Sen’s personal bodyguard unit knew in advance of the planned attack, facilitated access to the meeting by the grenade throwers, and helped with their escape, even providing them with shelter in the bodyguard unit’s barracks. 

A similar pattern was followed with the brutal physical assaults committed against members of parliament Nhay Chamroeun and Kong Saphea in October of 2015, again by members of Hun Sen’s bodyguard unit, who were rewarded for their efforts by major promotions in rank, after serving a slap on the wrist 6-month sentence for their admitted crimes. 

Amnesty International uncovered a similar form of government involvement in the assassination of political commentator Kem Ley in July of 2016, where videos showed government security motorcycles and vans, somehow positioned in advance on the scene, helping the alleged shooter in his escape attempt. 

These horrendous abuses will continue unless some action is taken to hold the Hun Sen government responsible for its violations of international law. That is why we are here today, to demand justice and accountability for Chea Vichea, and the many others who have been brutally repressed over the years because they exercised their internationally protected rights, and tried to “speak truth to power.” It is time that the truth Chea Vichea stood for and defended with his life, be told.