Cambodian inmates rarely attend own appeals

24 April 2012
ABC Radio Australia

A human rights group in Cambodia says inmates appealing their convictions almost never get to be in court to help defend their cases.

That's due to a lack of transport, money and prison staff.

The result says the LICADHO report is the denial of a fundamental right that's recognised internationally but also under Cambodia's legal system.

The human right's group says there's been little change in the last two years and it may be time to consider more radical approaches such as buses converted into travelling appeals courts.

Presenter: Liam Cochrane

Speaker: Jeff Vise, a consultant on prison issues for LICADHO

VISE: Well it's a combination of several factors that it could be. Initially there's basically no inmate transporation system available for long distances. So you have prisoners in the provincial prisons which in some cases are five, six, seven, eight hours away from Phnom Penh where the only appeals court is located, and there is a lack of transport vehicles and a lack of funding for fuel, and in the end the transfer's just doesn't get done, that's the main problem.

COCHRANE: And describe the scale of the problem, when you say the transfers don't get done, I mean what percentage or how many don't get done?

VISE: That's actually difficult to say. Most prison directors that our researchers talked to put it almost in absolute terms like it never happens except for the rare case where it may because the court pushes a little harder to get it done or if the inmate actually pays his or her own way.

COCHRANE: What sort of costs are we talking if that does happen?

VISE: It depends, in our report we mentioned one case that was reported in local media here where it was actually a prisoner here in Phnom Penh, so the distance was not that far. He reported paying about US two dollars and 50 cents to five dollars. But in the provinces when you're talking about a couple of hundred kilometre trip, possible overnight stay in a prison in Phnom Penh, the use of staff that are going to have to accompany you, the numbers we heard are up to 100 dollars.

COCHRANE: One-hundred dollars, so that's what a couple of months wages for a garment worker, just to put it into context in Cambodia?

VISE: Sure yeah.

COCHRANE: So what does that mean for prisoners? I mean we hear a lot about the unfairness of Cambodia's courts, the way that they're rigged, that they're open to corruption, so what does it mean for a prisoner to actually be present for his or her appeal?

VISE: Being present for an appeal is different in different legal systems, but in Cambodia the code of criminal procedures is pretty specific that it's important for a prisoner to be actually present, and that's for a number of reasons. The judge is actually allowed to reexamine the facts of the case, not just the legal procedure, not just the hearing that deals with legal procedure. The judge and the attorneys are allowed to interrogate the suspect, the suspect has a right to make a statement for himself, and in fact the code of criminal procedure actually has provisions in there requiring the judge, the prosecutor to request the inmate be transferred to the prison nearest to the appeals court and that practice seems to not take place very often.

COCHRANE: So this report from LICADHO is essentially an update from a report two years ago, and at that time a couple of key recommendations were made, fairly obvious stuff really, I mean keep inmates in Phnom Penh until their appeals have taken place so they don't have to be brought back from the provinces. And the other major one was to expand the capacity of the transport system so they can be transported. Now this report has made a couple of other suggestions, not saying that those two are obsolete, but made a couple of other suggestions. Can you tell us about those?

VISE: Sure well we definitely repeated our initial suggestions but since things are moving slow we realise that the creation of an inmate transportation system is a long-term project, that it requires better funding overall in the prison system. We also think that in the meantime they could do something for example like grouping inmate appeals, so if you have 10, 20, 30 guys in a distant prison in the provinces, if there was coordination between the courts, the prosecutors and the prisons themselves they could try to hear these appeals in succession so that they could all come over on one bus, one van, one truck to economise, basically to save some of the transport costs. The other thing is the establishment of a regional appeals court system. Right now there's only one appeals court in the entire country. And even though it's a small country transport or travel can be pretty slow, the roads are not the best, there's not a lot of internal flights. It's big enough in realistic terms that I think they would benefit from having several regional appeals courts and that would make it easier for inmates to sit at their appeals hearings. And an alternative to that maybe even a temporary solution would be a sort of mobile appeals court where the court itself is perhaps self-contained in some sort of vehicle. This has been used in other countries, you convert a bus into a court room essentially and it goes out to the provinces to hear cases. If you don't want to use a bus then you use the court of first instance out in the provinces as a temporary appeals courtroom.