AWARENESS RAISING
Cambodia was the scene of bloody crackdowns on protesting garment industry workers and their supporters in 2013 and 2014.The protesters were demanding that the minimum wage be doubled from $80 a month to $160 to adjust for inflation and cost of living.
The garment industry is the largest exporter in the country at an estimated $5 billion a year, making up 16 percent of its GDP. In the end, five people died, dozens were injured, and many more were arrested—marking the worst violence Cambodia had seen since the 1997 clashes over elections.
On a recent Sunday evening, just off Veng Sreng Boulevard in Phnom Penh, where four protesting garment workers were shot to death by police in January 2014, a crowd gathered for a small community concert.
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Against the backdrop of the high concrete and barbed wire walls of a garment factory, a well-lit stage hosted comedy, theater, dance, and music acts. The crowd drew onlookers as the evening progressed and the audience—many of them employed at the factories themselves—laughed, sang, danced, and clapped along. Though the mood was jovial, the issues addressed in the lyrics and scripts were serious: poor health care, wages that are barely enough to survive on, long workdays, and the pollution of their country’s natural resources.
Four of the six members of the Messenger Band
The garment industry is the largest exporter in the country at an estimated $5 billion a year, making up 16 percent of its GDP. In the end, five people died, dozens were injured, and many more were arrested—marking the worst violence Cambodia had seen since the 1997 clashes over elections.
On a recent Sunday evening, just off Veng Sreng Boulevard in Phnom Penh, where four protesting garment workers were shot to death by police in January 2014, a crowd gathered for a small community concert.
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Against the backdrop of the high concrete and barbed wire walls of a garment factory, a well-lit stage hosted comedy, theater, dance, and music acts. The crowd drew onlookers as the evening progressed and the audience—many of them employed at the factories themselves—laughed, sang, danced, and clapped along. Though the mood was jovial, the issues addressed in the lyrics and scripts were serious: poor health care, wages that are barely enough to survive on, long workdays, and the pollution of their country’s natural resources.
This is the ideal evening for the Messenger Band, an all-female grassroots NGO made up of former garment workers who educate and mobilize laborers through music and entertainment.
When the audience hears lyrics they can identify with, says Vun Em, a longtime member of the Messenger Band and a former worker in the garment industry, “they ask, where is this music coming from? It encourages them to reach out to each other, even if it’s just to make friends.”
Workers’ rights are the main focus of the Messenger Band’s mission, but quality of daily life for garment industry workers is another important aspect of their work, which is why they incorporate dance, theater, and comedy into their concerts. As a hip-hop dance crew from a local university pumped up the crowd to “Turn Down for What,” Em clapped along.