ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.
When police used stun batons to hit garment workers seeking a $14 monthly raise from a Nike factory in Cambodia in 2013, reportedly leading one pregnant woman to miscarry, Nike said it was “deeply concerned.”
The following year, when Cambodian police opened fire and killed four garment workers during widespread demonstrations over low wages, Nike and other brands sent the government a letter expressing “grave concern.”
In 2018, after the government curbed union rights, Nike and other brands again protested, this time in a meeting with government officials. An industry representative described the companies in a news release as “increasingly concerned.”
A year later, another letter: “We are concerned.”
Despite the varying shades of corporate concern, Cambodia continued descending deeper into authoritarian governance, and the size of Nike’s contract workforce there kept going up.
While Nike has been shrinking its footprint in China, its presence in Cambodia has grown, from about 16,000 factory workers in May 2013, to nearly 35,000 in 2019, to more than 57,000 as of March. Today, Cambodia is the athletic apparel giant’s third-largest supplier of garments other than shoes, nearly overtaking its clothing production in China.
Other Western brands have also continued expanding in Cambodia. The country’s garment exports climbed from $4.9 billion in 2013 to $9.3 billion in 2022, according to World Bank data.
Along the way, labor leaders have been jailed; opposing politicians have gone into exile and been arrested or killed; journalists have been locked up and killed; and independent media outlets have been shuttered by the government.
Sabrina Manufacturing workers gather at their union headquarters in Phnom Penh while protesting for higher wages at the Nike supplier in 2013. (Damir Sagolj/Reuters)The curbs on unions and free speech are in tension with Nike’s code of conduct, which recognizes workers’ rights to join trade unions and participate in union activities without interference. In countries that restrict union rights, Nike says factories must have an effective grievance process that allows employees to voice concerns over working conditions without fear of retaliation.
Nike’s continued growth in Cambodia underscores the level of political and labor repression the company has been willing to tolerate in countries that provide inexpensive labor — letters of concern notwithstanding.
“A lot of brands have been signing letters for years as a substitute for real pressure, real change,” said Jason Judd, executive director of Cornell University’s Global Labor Institute.
Brands increasing their orders from Cambodia while raising concerns about labor rights are “obviously mixed messages,” Judd said. “And one message, the purchase order, has a lot more weight than the other. Until those are credibly threatened, the government has no reason to act.”
Khun Tharo, program manager at the Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights, was targeted last year after his organization published a report identifying gaps in factory oversight. The government began auditing the legal aid group; Khun faced a criminal complaint that he said his lawyer had been unable to see.
Khun Tharo (Sarahbeth Maney/ProPublica)Khun told ProPublica that brands often speak up about worker rights because of prodding by civil society groups or the ire voiced by trading partners.
For Nike and other brands, “it’s about protecting their market and accessibility and also credibility. That’s all,” Khun said. Without pressure on brands to take action, he said, “they will not do it. They will just start to ignore it.”
Nike did not respond directly to written questions from ProPublica about its expansion in Cambodia amid the country’s intensifying political repression. Instead, it said in a statement: “We continue to engage with suppliers, industry organizations and other global stakeholders to develop broad-based approaches to help mitigate longer-term impacts.”
Labor rights are tenuous in Cambodia. The U.S. State Department said in a 2023 human rights report that “significant and systematic restrictions on workers’ freedom of association” exist in Cambodia and that the government “failed to effectively enforce laws that protected union and labor rights.” Human Rights Watch said in a 2022 report that the government’s repression of independent unions had only intensified after the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Former Khmer Rouge battalion commander Hun Sen led Cambodia from 1985 until handing control to his son, Hun Manet, in 2023. Hun Sen was brazen in his public dismissals of threats from the West over its assault on labor rights and civil society, said Carlyle Thayer, emeritus professor of politics at Australia’s University of New South Wales, Canberra. The threats included warnings from Europe, U.S. lawmakers and international clothing brands.
The Cambodian government yielded just enough to avoid the full force of economic sanctions, Thayer said.
He pointed to an episode in which the European Commission threatened to end tariff exemptions for Cambodian exports over concerns about human rights and labor abuses. Hun Sen directed the country’s courts to quickly decide cases pending against union officials, Thayer said, leading to suspended sentences for some and dropped charges for others.Instead of following through on its threat, the European Commission imposed a scaled-down set of trade restrictions.
Brands, including Nike, have had some influence. After workers were killed while protesting for higher wages in 2014, brands supported increasing the minimum wage. The Cambodian government eventually established a process to annually negotiate wage increases.
A spokesperson for Cambodia’s Ministry of Labor and Vocational Training said the incidents that led foreign brands to raise concerns with the government were “old,” misleading and had been politicized. The spokesperson did not respond to subsequent questions after a reporter noted that the most recent incident happened within the last year.
Ken Loo, a spokesperson for the Cambodian garment industry’s trade association, said thousands of unions are registered in the country. “I do not agree with your presumption that there is a repressive environment here in Cambodia,” he said. “Individual incidents do not make up the whole story.”
Many of Cambodia’s unions are government-aligned groups that Human Rights Watch has called “instant noodle” unions because they take less time to make than a cup of noodles. Independent unions have long been under assault there, according to American, European and other labor rights observers.
Yang Sophorn, president of the independent Cambodian Alliance of Trade Unions, was threatened in a July 2020 letter from the country’s labor ministry after joining workers who protested outside a garment factory, Violet Apparel. The factory had closed suddenly during the pandemic.
The former Nike supplier went on to become the subject of a long-standing dispute between labor advocates and Nike over wages that workers said they were still owed. Ramatex, Violet Apparel’s parent company, did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment. Nike has said publicly it’s found no evidence to support the allegations.
Yang Sophorn (Sarahbeth Maney/ProPublica)In its 2020 letter, the government told Yang that she was breaking the law by inciting workers and pressuring the closed factory to pay its employees. The letter said the labor ministry might dissolve her independent union, which represents more than 5,000 workers who make clothes in Nike factories. (The Cambodian labor ministry did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment about the letter.)
The labor leader had already received a suspended criminal sentence. The government said she instigated protests over wages, which occurred in 2013 and 2014. That conviction was eventually vacated in what Human Rights Watch said was an effort to placate European officials threatening Cambodia’s trade access.
Yang told ProPublica she was not scared by the Cambodian government’s threats against her and her union. “If they still want to dissolve it,” she said of the union, “let it be.”
Yang said she welcomes investments by Nike and other brands because they provide more jobs for people in her country. But she said workers need good wages, the right to assemble and protections when factories close without paying them. “If they just come to exploit our workers, I don’t want them,” she said.
Nike has prided itself on the story of its turnaround since co-founder Phil Knight acknowledged in 1998 that its products had become “synonymous with slave wages, forced overtime and arbitrary abuse.”
One former senior Nike executive, who requested anonymity so they could speak freely about their former employer, said the company had expanded in Cambodia to help diversify its supply chain. The executive said Nike and other brands’ presence had benefited workers in Cambodia and other countries where it manufactures.
“Nike has clearly stated that the rule of law and respect for labor rights are significant factors in where the company decides to place orders,” the executive said.
But, the person said, “Are things imperfect, and are there a lot of screwups? Absolutely. Are we concerned when Vietnam or Cambodia takes steps backward? Of course.”
After Nike last year underwent $2 billion in cost cutting that disproportionately targeted its sustainability staff, including people working on foreign factory oversight, the former executive said they worried that Nike’s cuts had affected the company’s ability to engage with its stakeholders in the countries where its factories operate.
Nike was silent last year when Cambodian authorities cracked down on the Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights, the legal aid group. The government launched what was described as a “national security audit” of the organization, also known as CENTRAL, after it reported on oversight gaps by a United Nations-backed factory watchdog.
Two industry groups, one of which counts Nike as a participant, wrote to the government on July 12 saying they had “serious concerns” that the audit’s only purpose was retaliation, condemning it “in the strongest possible terms.”
Nineteen major clothing companies — from Adidas to VF Corp., owner of the North Face brand — followed up Sept. 10 with a joint letter protesting Cambodia’s assault on the group, also saying they had “serious concerns.” Nike did not sign that letter.
“A vibrant civil society, guaranteed in part by freedom of speech, is a key part of what makes Cambodia an important sourcing partner for the apparel and footwear industry,” the companies said.
Nike did not explain why it was not a signatory when asked by ProPublica.
Bryony Lau, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said with the steady deterioration in workers’ rights in Cambodia and President Donald Trump’s cuts to U.S. foreign aid, Western apparel companies have an imperative to speak up in Cambodia.
“Nike and other brands sourcing from Cambodia have an interest in ensuring that organizations like CENTRAL continue to exist and can speak about labor rights issues,” Lau said.
Khun, the CENTRAL staffer, said he knew the Nike employee who focused on corporate social responsibility in Cambodia, but he said she left the company within the last year. Khun said he didn’t know whether anyone had replaced her. (She did not respond to ProPublica, and Nike did not respond to questions about her departure.)
CENTRAL this year faced a new government problem. When Trump began to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development in January, CENTRAL and two other groups received notice that they were losing $1.5 million in funding promised for a project intended to document human rights violations and counter Cambodia’s repression.
Less than two months later, the Trump administration attempted to gut Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, some of the only news sources available in Cambodia’s native language that reported on the country’s authoritarian turn. Former Prime Minister Hun Sen praised Trump’s “courage,” posting an image from 2017 of the two men shaking hands and smiling.
Trump was giving a thumbs up.
After Donald Trump attempted in 2025 to gut federally funded agencies that published news about Cambodia’s political repression, Hun Sen, Cambodia’s longtime leader, shared photos of himself meeting the U.S. president in 2017. (Screenshot by ProPublica)Keat Soriththeavy and Ouch Sony contributed reporting and translation.
This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Rob Davis.