On 15 February 2018, Rong Chhun, a former unionist who resigned from the National Election Committee (NEC) following the forced dissolution of the opposition, was fired from the Ministry of Education, along with twelve other teachers and union activists, for allegedly “being absent without permission”.
Chhun quit as a member of the NEC in November 2016 in protest of the controversial dissolution of the Cambodia National Rescue Party for its purported attempt to overthrow the government. A frequent government critic and the former president of the Cambodian Independent Teachers’ Assocation, Chhun said he was granted a leave of absence from the Education Ministry’s Research Department to work for the NEC in 2015.
He applied to rejoin the department on 3 January 2017, only to be informed at the end of last month that he had been terminated for being “absent without permission”, effective retroactively from the start of the year.
On the same day, the Ministry of Education also fired four ex-Cambodia National Rescue Party members from their teaching jobs in Siem Reap province, on the same grounds. The teachers claimed the move was «politically motivated» and «unjust».
