Financial Crisis Leading to Exploitation
The Global Financial Crisis has covered the headlines of newspapers across the world, and in Cambodia this is no exception. This year the garment district, among many business sectors, has closed 56 factories. This converts to an estimated 63,000 factory workers, primarily women, who have directly lost their jobs as of this June. The combination of job loss, declining work wages, and family adds fuel in the trade and exploitation of human beings.
Unfortunately as the factories have decreased their staff, women working in beer gardens, brothels, karaoke bars, and massage parlors are on the rise. These institutions are known for exploitation, but as demand for these entertainment services increases, so does the job market.
The Rapid Response Project is a collaborative effort launched this month to educate, train, and empower women who have lost their factory job and to prevent or offer new options to women working in these exploitative situations. In conjunction with other NGO’s, UN agencies, and the garment factory association in Cambodia 100,000 magazines aimed at women working in the garment factory will be distributed in the upcoming month.
Lodi Prayer Controversy
Attorneys for Pacific Justice Institute sent a legal memorandum Thursday, August 6, to the Lodi City Council offering a solution to a controversy that has erupted in the city over invocations before City Council meetings.
In May, a Wisconsin-based organization, the Freedom from Religion Foundation, urged the City Council not to allow invocations at City Council meetings to end “in Jesus’ name.” This past week, opposing sides of the issue rallied in front of the bi-monthly City Council meeting to express their views, and the City Council is expected to hear public sentiment on the issue again in late September.
In the memo from Pacific Justice Institute, which is based in Sacramento, Chief Counsel Kevin Snider discussed leading cases involving public invocations and encouraged the Council to adopt a neutral policy allowing ministers and other members of the public to open the meetings with prayer or other comments, free of any censorship by the Council. Under such an approach, prayers in Jesus’ name could not be singled out for exclusion.
Brad Dacus, president of Pacific Justice Institute, commented, “It is simply un-American for the government to censor speech, including the mention of God or Jesus, by private citizens in a public setting. We are offering the City of Lodi a practical, constitutional solution to this needless controversy so the out-of-state special interests can fold their tents and go home.”