Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
INTRODUCTION
A Mirage on the Mekong
It was several seconds before Bun Chenda knew what had happened. There was a thudding
impact, like the blow of a hammer, which sent her falling to the ground. Then there was
pain, flowering in her chest. She tasted the metallic tang of blood. As a crowd closed in
blurrily around, she later said, “I felt dead already.”
It was mid-February 2012, and the situation at the Manhattan Special Economic Zone in
Svay Rieng was growing tense. Workers at three garment factories had walked off the job,
demanding greater pay, and the Kaoway Sportswear Factory, where 21-year-old Chenda
assembled running shoes, was on the verge of its own strike. The workers' demands were
modest—an extra US $10 per month to cover transport costs and a 50-cent daily food al-
lowance—but the Taiwanese factory managers had refused to give ground. Instead, the po-
lice were deployed. They fired tear-gas at the protesters and union leaders, who responded
with rocks and projectiles of their own.
Chenda wasn't the sort to hurl rocks. She was shy, with loose strands of hair that framed
dark hazel eyes and pale angular features. Each morning she commuted to work from her
home in Prek Pdav, a village of square homes and verdant rice fields a few kilometers
from the sprawling industrial parks of Bavet, a town on the Vietnamese border. Here her
mother and father owned a shack of corrugated aluminum, two cows, and a small plot of
land. Chenda was 12 years when she finished school, 15 when she started working. She
had been at Kaoway for six months. The tedious work brought in a small salary—just $81
plus overtime per month—but the extra money helped her parents hire laborers for their
rice paddies and keep their rickety Daelim motorbike filled with gas. Most of the Kaoway
workers had a similar story, traveling each day from villages across rural Svay Rieng, glu-
ing soles for as long as it took to help keep their families' heads above water. As Chenda
told me, “we're tired of working in the factory, but there's no choice. We have to do it for
the money.”
The morning shift usually started at 7:30 a.m., but on the morning of February 20
Chenda arrived to find the gates of the factory closed. Police posted outside told her to re-
