Cambodia's Fearless Heroine
from the DailyBeast
by Gail Sheehy
The smile of Mo Sochua is gentle. It’s the sweet Cambodian smile, as deceptive as her birth country. The Cambodia of the headlines is a great success story: “Democracy Sprung from Bones of the Killing Fields,” or “Five Top Khmer Rouge Leaders on Trial.” But scratch the surface, says Sochua, the most outspoken human-rights activist in the parliament, and you will see Cambodia “fast regressing to a soft dictatorship.”
“I sat up and said, ‘I’m not going to take this anymore! I am not going to be defenseless. I am going to jail.’”
Beneath the surface of her serenity is a caldron of energy and passion to save Cambodian women from sex slavery in brothels, where she goes at night to comfort and educate them. She campaigns to restore free and fair elections. She stands with families who are being brutally driven off their lands with methods similar to those of the Khmer Rouge. Today, it’s the military that wields guns, tear gas, and beatings, and burns fields and homes to the ground to turn over the land to rich developers or corporations, all sanctioned by the government.
You would never imagine that this elegant woman with the high cheekbones of her Chinese mother, dressed in a hand-tailored suit, crossing the lobby of the Parker-Meridien Hotel in Manhattan to meet me for an interview, could be called a “hustler” or “gangster.” But that is how she has been shamed by the leader of her country, Prime Minister Hun Sen, the Vietnamese strongman who has been in power for over 30 years.
(Continued here.)
by Gail Sheehy
The smile of Mo Sochua is gentle. It’s the sweet Cambodian smile, as deceptive as her birth country. The Cambodia of the headlines is a great success story: “Democracy Sprung from Bones of the Killing Fields,” or “Five Top Khmer Rouge Leaders on Trial.” But scratch the surface, says Sochua, the most outspoken human-rights activist in the parliament, and you will see Cambodia “fast regressing to a soft dictatorship.”
“I sat up and said, ‘I’m not going to take this anymore! I am not going to be defenseless. I am going to jail.’”
Beneath the surface of her serenity is a caldron of energy and passion to save Cambodian women from sex slavery in brothels, where she goes at night to comfort and educate them. She campaigns to restore free and fair elections. She stands with families who are being brutally driven off their lands with methods similar to those of the Khmer Rouge. Today, it’s the military that wields guns, tear gas, and beatings, and burns fields and homes to the ground to turn over the land to rich developers or corporations, all sanctioned by the government.
You would never imagine that this elegant woman with the high cheekbones of her Chinese mother, dressed in a hand-tailored suit, crossing the lobby of the Parker-Meridien Hotel in Manhattan to meet me for an interview, could be called a “hustler” or “gangster.” But that is how she has been shamed by the leader of her country, Prime Minister Hun Sen, the Vietnamese strongman who has been in power for over 30 years.
(Continued here.)
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