Opposition activists who fled to Thailand after the CNRP was dissolved fear they could be targeted, followed and attacked for their politics and associations.
Poipet city’s casino industry has been shuttered since late April as they became Covid-19 hotspots, and it’s been more than three months of scraping by for many of the thousands of casino workers who found themselves out of work.
Heng Sreynop says she lives in a red zone in Thailand, and fears Covid-19. She says she understands why the borders need to be closed, but it adds to the pressure. “If we wanted to escape, we couldn’t escape. We don’t know where to escape.”
More than 300 Cambodians came through the O’Smach checkpoint in Oddar Meanchey — almost as many as had returned this whole month — ahead of the closing of borders with Thailand, while other border provinces prepared curfews and lockdown restrictions.
Phnom Penh is banning gatherings with alcohol or with more than 10 people, as well as going out after 9 p.m., following a nationwide order for municipal and provincial authorities to implement the measures to stop the spread of the Delta variant of Covid-19, while eight border provinces will also enter three-tiered lockdown tonight for two weeks.
As much as 25 percent of migrant workers coming back from Covid-stricken Thailand are testing positive, according to provincial authorities, as some returnees said they believe they are contracting the disease in crowded quarantine centers along the border.
Leung Sophon, rights group Central’s Thailand-based project officer, said routine testing at workers’ residences — which have been hotspots in the country’s ongoing Covid-19 surge — haven’t been reported for over a week.
In a move a labor group said was unprecedented, NagaWorld is calling on governmental labor inspectors to authorize the dismissal of a group of union leaders as part of the casino’s mass layoffs, overriding the legal protections unionists enjoy unless they have committed serious offenses, a workers’ representative said.
Whether they have the virus or not, Cambodian workers in Thailand say they’re struggling as Covid-19 surges at construction sites and other workplaces packed with migrant laborers.
Less than a year to elections, the country’s former main opposition party says it has no plan it can share with the public about rebuilding a political presence in the country.
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