Cambodia: Cost of shooting someone ($1,300) is barely higher than the cost of killing someone ($960)

Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Shooting, Assault Victims Receive Compensation

By Saing Soenthrith
The Cambodia Daily

Three victims of a Nov 4 assault and shooting at a Shell gas station on Monivong Boulevard have received $5,000 in compensation, one of the victims said Monday. The two suspects, a security guard at the station and the son of the station's owner, allegedly shot Sroy Nika, a 27-year-old reporter for the Khmer-language newspaper Rasmei Kampuchea, through the foot with a K-59 handgun. His companion, Phen Tharoth, 23, was shot in the right thigh, and the third victim, Tev Sarak Rin, 19, was hit in the head with a blunt object earlier in the night after urinating in the station's flowerbed. Sroy Nika said by telephone that he received $1,000 in compensation. Phen Tharoth, who is still recovering at Calmette Hospital from the bullet to his thigh, received $1,300, and Tev Sarak Rin got $1,000, Sroy Nika added. It was unclear Monday where the remaining $1,700 went. Tev Sarak Mony, father of Tev Sarak Rin, whose public urination at the gas station provoked the initial violence, said the civil case is now finished and military police and the prosecutor must decide whether to press criminal charges against the gunmen. Chan Soveth, a monitor for human rights group Adhoc, cautioned that rich people should not be able buy impunity. "It means the state of law in Cambodia is going down," he said.