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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-03-18 Daily Xml
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One Thousand Lights for Women

Mrs VLAHOS (Taylor) (15:18): I would like to speak today on a recent visitor I hosted in the South Australian parliament. It was a great pleasure to meet once again with a leading Cambodian member of parliament, Mu Sochua. I wish to speak about a great initiative that she recently launched called One Thousand Lights for Women with her party in Cambodia. This surrounded the events leading up to International Women's Day on 8 March. Mu Sochua and I both became friends in 2012 when she visited my electorate and she and I participated in a Buddhist ceremony. We have kept in contact since then.

Included in her Cambodian parliamentary duties, Sochua is the head of the Women's Caucus in parliament and she chairs the Women's Caucus of the Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats—an association of eight political parties in South-East Asia. Sochua is also a senior member of the Cambodia National Rescue Party and a globally renowned pro-democracy advocate. In fact, in 2005 she won an award from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Vital Voices Global Leadership Award, which basically revolves around leadership and mobilising global actions in combatting the trafficking of women and children in the Asia Pacific region.

She also won the Eleanor Roosevelt Award in 2009 for a project with the George Washington University for leadership in human rights. She has a PhD in law and is a very accomplished woman, a very compassionate woman and a very courageous woman, standing in front of many violent protest movements that threaten the average, ordinary Cambodian in their everyday life, and standing side by side with them.

When we met two weeks ago in parliament we discussed One Thousand Lights for Women. With almost 20 per cent of all Cambodians in South Australia living in my electorate, it is very important to them that I participate in this process. My electorate has two Cambodian temples: the Watt Khmer Santipheap, which is the Temple of Peace; and the Watt Preah Puth Mean Chey, which is the Victory of Buddha at Macdonald Park. The Khmer Buddhist Association of South Australia also has a temple adjacent to Taylor, in the member for Ramsay's electorate.

Sochua and I discussed how this new program, One Thousand Lights for Women, will boost democracy in her country. This program aims at training women leaders in Cambodia to improve their political training and confidence to participate in democracy, and actually stand for office in their next round of elections in Cambodia. Its aim is to train new female politicians and to connect them with mentors. I was more than happy to volunteer as a mentor for this program and perhaps even offer some sort of internship, if it is allowed, with my office in the parliament and in my electorate of Taylor. It is about providing women with the opportunity that they might not otherwise have to become active in private industry, local community politics or national politics in Cambodia.

One example is the story of Meng Sopheary, who begged her grandmother to let her attend elementary school when she was a girl. She begged her grandmother again to let her finish secondary school, because she was an adolescent who should stay close to home. It was not until she entered law school that her grandmother finally gave in and gave her approval. In Cambodian society this was a lot. Meng Sopheary is now one of 176 female lawyers in Cambodia. She now has a solid foundation where she has the capacity to analyse the law and perhaps one day engage in local politics. One Thousand Lights for Women is a program sorely needed in Cambodian civil society, which aims to build on this maturing but fledgling democracy, boost its citizenship with 21st century skills and to fight the corruption that is sometimes seen throughout South-East Asia.

Earlier this year, the Cambodian Court of Appeal upheld a decision to imprison 10 land activists and a Buddhist monk for protesting against a company they allege was causing floods in their local community. Soon I will be sending Mu Sochua a letter of support for a more transparent and open civil society, offering my help with her pro-democracy campaign. It is a wish that many of my Cambodian Australian constituents have told me they hold dear to their heart and it is something I will continue to fight for with them. They still hold their hearts in their hands for Cambodia and they still feel the hurt and pain of having to leave their homeland and flee from persecution. I will do everything in my power to help with them with this aim of building a democratic and fair nation.

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