"Jailed for a Facebook post: garment workers' rights at risk during Covid-19," 16 Jun 2020

On the evening of 31 March, at the height of the Covid-19 epidemic, Soy Sros, a young Cambodian garment worker, took out her phone and posted a message on Facebook...

...the government had issued guidance to panicking factory owners not to sack workers but to send them home with reduced pay. In her post Sros published the factory’s plans to ignore that guidance and dismiss 88 workers, including a pregnant woman.

By calling them out, Sros knew she’d make her employers angry. But she never thought that her post would land her in prison...

On 1 April, her employer, the Hong-Kong based Superl Holdings, which makes luxury handbags for Michael Kors, Jimmy Choo, Kate Spade, Coach and Versace, made a U-turn and told its workers they would keep their jobs. Sros deleted the Facebook post. The following day she was arrested.

At the police station Sros, a single mother of two young children, discovered the company had filed criminal charges, claiming that she had incited social unrest, defamed the factory and spread “fake news”. The Cambodian courts charged her with an additional two criminal charges for provocation, charges that carry prison terms of up to three years... Sros, who is also a union representative at the factory, spent 55 days in pre-trial detention...

Workers in at least three factories making clothes for Zara, Primark and Mango have told the Guardian that managers are using Covid-19 disruptions as an excuse to dismiss hundreds of union members at different factories across the country...

Primark, Zara and Mango say they are committed to ensuring workers can unionise, and are launching investigations and working with their suppliers to resolve any issues...The factory management at Huabo Times could not be reached for comment.