Cambodian authorities brutally beat down labor strikers

Cambodian troops armed with batons and rifles have broken up a protest by textile workers demanding a doubling of wages as part of a nationwide strike by unions allied with the main opposition party.

Witnesses said around 100 soldiers wearing riot gear and carrying assault rifles on Thursday used force to clear hundreds of workers protesting outside their factory about 20km west of the capital, Phnom Penh.

"Soldiers beat up everyone," said labour rights activist Chhorn Sokha of the Community Legal Education Center. "They had sticks, electric batons, slingshots and stones."

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The garment workers, whose industry is a major employer worth $5bn a year to the economy, have joined protests led by the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), which says it was cheated out of more than two million votes in an election last July.

The CNRP has courted some 350,000 garment factory workers with the promise of a minimum monthly wage equivalent to $160, a proposal dismissed by the government as unsustainable.

The factory makes clothes for H&M, Gap and other Western brands.