Jailed for a Facebook Post: Garment Workers' Rights at Risk During COVID-19

On the evening of 31 March, at the height of the Covid-19 epidemic, Soy Sros, a young Cambodian garment worker, took out her phone and posted a message on Facebook.

The Cambodian garment sector was in freefall with billions of dollars of clothing orders canceled and factories closing.

In response, the government had issued guidance to panicking factory owners not to sack workers but to send them home with reduced pay. In her post Sros published the factory’s plans to ignore that guidance and dismiss 88 workers, including a pregnant woman.

By calling them out, Sros knew she’d make her employers angry. But she never thought that her post would land her in prison.

Click here to keep reading. Annie Kelly and Harriet Grant write for The Guardian.