By Saing Soenthrith and James Welsh
THE CAMBODIA DAILY
"We do not believe the police and court will solve
our problems so we need to reduce our anger ourselves..."
- Anonymous woman
The angry residents of Kien Klaing village claimed that 1,656 of them were collectively tricked out of $610,000 by three women who had set up an informal saving and loan scheme known as tong tin.
Villagers identified their two captives as "Vietnamese grandmothers," but refused to name them. The villagers said they had also taken a third woman hostage, but she had escaped while being escorted to collect the money owed.
After taking the women hostage at around noon the villagers refused to release them to local police. The hundreds-strong mob lashed out at several armed police officers and reporters who tried to take pictures.
Three police officers sustained minor injuries and one Cambodia Daily reporter had his camera confiscated by the crowd and chopped to pieces.
Shortly before 3 pm, military police at the scene led a reporter through the circle of villagers to two seriously injured, bleeding women lying among bricks that appeared to have been used to beat them.
One woman was barely conscious while the other moved sporadically with a dazed look on her bloodied face.
A journalist for CTN arrived at around 3 pm and began to conduct negotiations between the armed police and villagers to release the women.
Shortly after 4 pm, the crowd agreed to let police remove the women and they were driven away in a police truck. No one was arrested.
Chey Soseila, Russei Keo district police chief, said police are investigating.
"First we need to get all the tong tin victims' complaints and then we'll investigate the ringleaders who led the mob and beat our policemen." he said, adding that he did not know the names of the two injured women.
One man. who identified himself as Dy, 43, said he was cheated out of about $1,500 during his seven months of participating in the tong tin.
A woman who declined to give her name said that since their is no law to protect people from falling victim to the scheme, mob justice was the only solution.
"There is no law for tong tin," she said. "There is also no law for beating them until they die," she added.
Several villagers said that they didn't trust the police and that mob violence was their only chance of justice.
"We do not believe the police and court will solve our problems so we need to reduce our anger ourselves rather than hand over those managers to police," said one woman who also declined to give her name.
2 comments:
extremely sad that the country has gone into such a state or anarchy. People don't understand what justice means unless the police, military police, court, and all the way up to the congress people uphold it. See whose's fault is it that this happen? Certainly not those poor woman, they don't deserve that, no one does. If anyone deserve such a beating, It should be the CPP who had lost the people's confidence long since it took power, yield justice to corruption, and sold democracy for money.
My condolences goes out to the three Vietnamese victims and the mob that are deprived of what it means to live in a just and civilize society, one rule with justice and law.
Jeyo! Jeyo! may we get there one day, and soon.
2:48 PM, you've hit the nail on the head. Your point is exactly what is going on in Cambodian society. Because the average Khmer understand that authorities, especially higher ups, like the CPP do not respect the law, why should they follow it? Cambodians have no faith whatsoever in the present justice system, because the ruling party is presently full of corruption and misdeeds.
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