Op-ed day 4: Mu Sochua, “A Rebel With a Cause” --by Andrew

The current situation of women in Cambodia is reflected in one of the country’s traditional sayings: men are like gold and women are like a piece of white cloth; when dropped in the mud, you can wipe the mud off of the gold and it shines again, but the white cloth is stained forever. In a country where inequality is enshrined in law, Mu Sochua, a fearless human rights activist and the most prominent woman in the Cambodian opposition Sam Rainsy Party, works tirelessly to unite these individual pieces of cloth with the hopes of wiping clean the country’s political corruption.

According to a 2010 article in The New York Times, Ms. Sochua is “a member of a new generation of women who are working their way into the political systems of countries across Asia and elsewhere.” A former minister for women’s affairs, Ms. Sochua has been courageously championing the rights women, youth, and labor across the country since her return from 18 years in exile. She has gone to the morgue to look for victims of sex trafficking, stood in solidarity with women against police forces singing songs of protest, and, most notably, led the way for women into thousands of government positions. Ms. Sochua is a courageous voice of dissent in a corrupt and abusive political system, but there have been numerous attempts to silence her.

Since April 2009, Ms. Sochua has been engaged in a thorny legal battle against the prime minister. She sued him for defamation; he stripped her of her parliamentary immunity and sued her back. When her case was thrown out, she was convicted of defaming the prime minister and now faces the possibility of going to jail for refusing to pay the 16.5 million riel fee, which amounts to $4,000. Despite the risks she faces by defying the most powerful man in the government, she refuses to back down.

The legal farce is shameful for the government and discredits the prime minister, but by playing to her opponents’ weaknesses and confronting corruption head-on, Ms. Sochua is making progress. “If you confront your opponent without fear, but confront it with principles, then you win,” she said. In the end, the prime minister may have won in court, but Ms. Sochua is the real winner. True justice is on her side and, hopefully, Cambodia will continue to be as well.