THE TALE OF TWO STUDENTS

Thursday, July 2, 2009
Op-Ed by Chanda Chhay

Justice Speech

I have been a frequent critic of the verdicts the Phnom Penh Municipal Court handed out to the accused who had the misfortune of going through its door. However, my criticism of the court in this article takes on a rather different level of emotion as the judge who sentenced a newspaper editor to a one year imprisonment and a $2,250 fine is my friend. As a journalist, I am very upset to see that we could be sentenced to jail terms for a mere fact of disseminating the news about alleged wrong doing of public officials. And as the judge’s friend, I am quite troubled to see him made such a lopsided decision. But, putting personal feelings aside, I think our story presents a good opportunity for us to observe how different political and social environments shape our lives.

Before I begun the story, I wish to make it clear to those journalist purists that by writing this story, in which I have a personal connection to the subject, I have violated one of the journalist codes of ethics. However, to be fair to the other Phnom Penh Municipal Court’s judges who had been criticized by me in the past, I am obliged to write this story so that my conscience won’t condemn me for being biased.

Judge Din Sivuthy and I have known each other since we were boys playing in the dusty road in Kompong Thom province. In the early 1990s, as I was studying journalism and political sciences in a U.S. university, Judge Din Sivuthy was studying laws in the former Soviet Union. For about 5 years in which we pursued our respective studies, we exchanged many letters about our perspectives of the world and what our future could become, given the fact that Communism and its dictatorial way of operation has been crumbling down like dominoes. By the late 1990s, as he returned to Cambodia and took up a post in the Cambodian Ministry of Justice, Judge Din Sivuthy and I once again re-established our contact through my frequent visits to Cambodia. Though our ways of life and patterns of thought have been somewhat driven apart by the different political and social environments in which we live, our thoughts at the intellectual levels still have many things in common. I remembered, in 1998 when we first met again, Judge Din Sivuthy and I had a discussion about judicial system in the U.S.A. Throughout our conversation, I could see the wishful thinking in his eyes when I told him that judges in the U.S. are either appointed by the executive branch and confirmed by the legislative branch of government or elected by the people. Once they were appointed to their posts, judges are immune from any influence by the people who appointed them, and they could serve as public servants for the rest of their lives. The only case that a judge could be removed from his/her post is when he or she committed a serious crime.

After listening to my lecture on the U.S. judicial system, Judge Din Sivuthy told me that it would be a dream if Cambodia had such a system in place. At that instance, I wish I could grant him that dream. But, we all know that such a dream in Cambodia is indeed very far-fetched. However, putting negativism aside, I somehow remain optimistic that some day such a dream could come true. All we need is a collective will from everyone involved, especially the top leadership in government, to work together to achieve it.

When we went to school to train to become a journalist or a judge, we all aspired to doing it right according to the knowledge we acquired. But when we deviated from our aspiration to doing it right, we all suffer the consequences—journalist going to jail while judge getting criticized.

Just as I don’t want any judge telling me what I could or could not write on any issue of social concerns, I am fully aware that I have no right to tell Judge Din Sivuthy what to do concerning his duties. But, as his friend, I believe I have a duty to tell him that his sentencing of a newspaper editor, Mr. Hang Chakra, to a one year imprisonment and a $2,250 fine is too excessive. Based on news reports on the case, the crime of reporting false information, which yet to be proven as false, does not warrant jail terms.

Chanda Chhay
Washington, D.C. (USA)