International Women’s Day
On March 8,2013, the Khmers Kampuchea-Krom Federation (KKF) joins the international women to celebrate and honor the great achievements around the world, and at the same time we wish to bring awareness of the ongoing sufferings of the Khmer-Krom women in their homeland, Kampuchea-Krom (the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam), and those stateless Khmer-Krom women living in Cambodia and Thailand.
In Kampuchea-Krom, Khmer-Krom women, Mrs. Tran Thi Chau in Tra Vinh province, had been arrested and imprisoned for her stand on land claim against the Vietnamese authorities’ extortion policy. Khmer-Krom women continue facing Vietnam’s discriminatory policies such as barriers to higher education, to employment, and health, and continue to live in sub-standard and marginalized condition.
Across Cambodia and Thailand, many Khmer-Krom women continue to live in fear and in dire poverty due their stateless status, who are being rejected in Cambodia as Khmer citizen and being denied refugee status by the United Nations’ Office in Bangkok, Thailand, even though these Khmer-Krom women and their family members had faced persecutions and arrests in their homeland in Kampuchea-Krom. Many simply demanded for the return of their ancestral lands formerly confiscated by the Vietnamese authorities.
In a free society whereby the rights of women are being protected and honored, but the rights of the Khmer-Krom women in Kampuchea-Krom are still being violated. They live in fear and poverty.
Thach Ngoc Thach
KKF President