The songs of the Messenger Band, a group of former garment workers, are helping drive the fight for women’s labour rights in Cambodia

Chrek Sopha and Kao Sochevika arrived on the scene after the worst had happened. Smoke rose from flaming tyres. Stones and shoes littered blood-soaked roads as protesters ran amok. Angry workers tried to take tools and bottles of petrol from nearby stalls. Gunshots filled the air as men in uniform chased the protesters and fired at them with automatic rifles.

It was January 3 last year and, minutes earlier, five garment workers demanding a rise in the minimum wage had been shot dead by police on Veng Sreng Boulevard, an industrial part of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.

That day, the Messenger Band, a six-strong singing group formed in 2005 when an NGO held auditions for girls working in the garment industry, decided to compose a song.