While working with Cambodian refugees in San Francisco as part of her MSW degree in the early 1980s, Mu Sochua never imagined herself a key political figure in the country of her birth. But now the activist turned politician is in the midst of a political standoff with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen in a case that has attracted the attention of Human Rights Watch and the UN High Commission on Human Rights.Sochua (pronounced Soc-Hua) fled from the growing violence in Cambodia in 1973 when her parents put her and her sister on a plane headed for France. She then came to the U.S. to attend San Francisco State, and enrolled in the MSW program at Berkeley in 1979. As a student she did field work working with the Cambodian refugee community – first with Alameda County Health Care Services, later with the Cambodian Project at the YMCA.
“It is a very Cambodian way of thinking not to be egotistic,” Ms. Mu told the SF Chronicle in an article about Cambodian refugees in 1979. “Once you are safe, you have to think of the people who suffer…It is a common feeling that we all share.”
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