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Open fire by guards at apparel industry |
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June 23, 2000
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) - Security guards at a Cambodian garment factory opened fire on a mob of striking workers Thursday, injuring at least one of about 1,000 protesters demanding a substantial pay raise.
A 23-year-old female worker sustained a minor head injury and was taken to a nearby hospital. Protesters claimed that a second male worker suffered a broken leg in the chaos that led to the shooting, but the injury could not be confirmed.
Garment workers swarmed the streets on the outskirts of the capital for a second straight day of a strike aimed at winning an increase in minimum wage from dlrs 40 to dlrs 70.
War-shattered Cambodia has a heavily dollarized economy and the garment industry and unions negotiate in U.S. dollars.
The union-organized protesters marched from factory to factory, forcing open locked gates and urging workers inside to join the strike.
The walkout is believed to have closed nearly 20 of the country's 178 garment factories, which form a backbone of the struggling economy.
When the protesters reached the gates of the Mithona factory, armed guards beat back the mob with sticks, witnesses said. The demonstrators responded by throwing rocks and storming the gate, and the guards countered by opening fire.
"The security guards shot two or three times in the air and for some reason they lowered their guns and started shooting at people," 18-year-old striker Lim Srey Mom said.
Hospital staff said Chao Chanda sustained a minor head wound and was in stable condition. It was not clear if her head had been grazed by a bullet or struck by a rock. Violence continued outside the factory for about an hour, with workers pelting its windows with rocks until pro-labor politician and opposition leader Sam Rainsy arrived.
After conferring with police, the popular politician gave a brief speech to the strikers and led them away from the factory. Garment assembly is a dlrs 700 million industry in chiefly agrarian Cambodia, where cheap and unskilled labor is one of the impoverished country's few comparative advantages.
Unions claim most factories operate as pitiless sweatshops by ignoring the country's labor code, forcing unpaid overtime and maintaining substandard factory conditions.
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