Cambodian inmates endure crowded prisons

While the government estimates that there are 15,000 prisoners, rights groups say the number is much higher.

05 Nov 2011
Al Jazeera

The Cambodian government is debating a controversial law to overhaul the country's increasingly overcrowded prison system.

While the government estimates that there are 15,000 prisoners, human rights groups say the true number is much higher.

A look inside a prison in rural Cambodia reveals the conditions many inmates are forced to endure.

Steve Chao reports from Pailin.

Prison Department Drafting a Reform Policy

Chun Sakada, VOA Khmer
Phnom Penh Thursday, 03 February 2011

“The prisoners have the right and freedom to meet and talk with their own family members, and their rights are to be respected.”

The Ministry of Interior’s prison department is preparing to reform its visitation and other policies, to allow inmates to meet with family members on special occasions and gain skills ahead of their release, officials said Thursday.

The reforms will allow prisoners visitation a day ahead of major holidays, such as the New Year, giving them more time with their families, Nouth Saan, secretary of state for the Interior Ministry, told VOA Khmer.

The initiative was discussed and approved during an annual meeting of the prison department last week.

Other reforms will include the development of skills training in areas like electronics repair and agriculture, said Kuy Bun Sorn, director of the prison department.

Dentist volunteer sees sad sights in Cambodian prison

Thu, 30 Dec 2010
By Chris Morris
Otago Daily Times Online (New Zealand)

Dunedin dentist Gary Marks had good reason to savour his Christmas dinner this year, having experienced a taste of the squalid conditions of a French colonial-era prison in Cambodia.

Mr Marks (61) returned to Dunedin last month after about four weeks working as a volunteer for an international dental school in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.

The assignment included a week on Cambodia's south coast, working inside Kampot Prison helping supervise 15 dental students treating the facility's inmates.

Mr Marks told the Otago Daily Times yesterday the inmates' dental problems included chronic decay requiring numerous tooth extractions, but the challenges did not stop there.

Cramped and "fairly squalid" conditions meant the inmates slept about 50 people to a room, on thin mattresses over concrete floors, and health problems - including HIV, scabies and conjunctivitis - were prevalent, he said.

"They were pretty sad sights in there."

Despite that, Mr Marks and his students were only allowed to work after agreeing to provide their own power generator and treat the prison's staff and families first.

Treating the staff and families took the best part of a day and a-half out of the group's week-long trip to the prison, Mr Marks said.

The international dental school in Phnom Penh, established five years ago, was one of only two in Cambodia.

The school's dean, Callum Durward, is a former dental school classmate of Mr Marks and had invited his former colleagues to volunteer to work in Cambodia.

The country lacked trained dentists as well as dental schools, with those who did practise dentistry not requiring formal qualifications, he said.

"But you know what you're getting, of course.

A lot of these back-street boys have just learnt off their parents or learnt off someone else."

Poverty had actually prevented the worst dental problems associated with the consumption of refined carbohydrates or sugars, but that was changing as people became more affluent and could afford junk food, he said.

Mr Marks' work in Kampot Prison was supported by the New Zealand-based One-2-One Charitable Trust, which assisted in orphanages and aimed to help prisoners in the country's 35 prisons over the next few years, he said.

While conceding his work was "a drop in the bucket", Mr Marks believed it was rewarding for both the prisoners and students.

He previously worked as a volunteer treating children in Nepal, and planned to return to Cambodia to continue his work in "a couple of years".

chris.morris@odt.co.nz

Holiday in Cambodia?

April 6, 2010
Joe Amon
Director of the health division at Human Rights Watch
The Huffington Post (USA)

"The law don't mean shit if you've got the right friends"

A couple of weeks ago, the Sunday New York Times ran an article in the travel section about gay hot spots in Cambodia: "...men in their 30s and 40s wearing unbuttoned collared shirts and checkered krama scarves sipped fruity cocktails and jostled for space with the young Khmer crowd."

I couldn't help but feel a certain dissonance because it is exactly this demographic that might best remember the Dead Kennedys' song "Holiday in Cambodia." When the song was released in 1980 it felt rebellious to sing along with the refrain: "It's a holiday in Cambodia, it's tough kid but it's life." And while for tourists the idea of a Cambodian vacation has become an idyll, for young Cambodians, the Dead Kennedys' lyrics are still very much alive.

"A holiday in Cambodia, where you'll kiss ass or crack"

Each year, Cambodia sends thousands of people to drug detention centers, where they are physically and sexually abused and made to do manual labor and exhausting military drills in the name of "treatment" and "rehabilitation."

Detainees are subject to harsh physical punishments. Breaking a rule could result in being whipped with electrical wire, electrocuted, or being chained to a pole in the sun. Human Rights Watch interviewed Cambodians who had been detained in these centers. One explained:

"[The staff member] would use the cable to beat people. He had three kinds of cable, made from peeling off the plastic from an electrical wire. One cable was the size of a little finger, one is the size of a thumb and one is the size of a toe. He would ask which you prefer. On each whip the skin would come off and stick on the cable."

"For a bowl of rice a day, slave for soldiers till you starve"

Former detainees told us they were given insufficient food, sometimes rotten or insect-ridden. They described symptoms such as difficulty walking, or swelling and numbness in their extremities, all consistent with beriberi - a lack of vitamin B. "I could never get full," one person told us." You were full for a short period of time, and then you start starving again."

"A holiday in Cambodia, where you'll do what you're told"

One of the most heartbreaking things we found was that UNICEF was funding one detention center where these abuses were taking place. The children were sent there from street sweeps or were arrested at the request of a family member. For between US$200-300, the police will arrest your child. There is no formal charge, no lawyer and no opportunity to appeal. As long as the family keeps paying the monthly treatment costs the child is kept.

Families are often desperate for help managing drug dependency problems, and the government promotes the centers as treatment centers. Without voluntary, community-based alternatives, where else can families go? Tragically, we also heard that the police would arrest and detain children regardless of whether or not they even used drugs - if parents thought that their kids were gay they might be at risk. The centers also hold alcoholics, gamblers, and the mentally ill.

As rebellious youth go, young Cambodians today are far from hard-core punks. When Human Rights Watch talked with these kids, they were almost invariably softly spoken and polite, often from poor families or broken homes. The majority used ya ba (methamphetamine) or ice (crystal methamphetamine) recreationally. Some may have been dependent on drugs; many did not seem to be. Some had a genuine desire to stop using drugs. Others were open about their past drug use, but told us that they had stopped using drugs weeks or even months before they were thrown into detention.

"The law don't mean shit if you've got the right friends"

Last week, facing intense criticism from our report, UNICEF went out to the detention center they fund for a visit. They told the Phnom Penh Post, that they too found the kids to be polite and engaging. They concluded that no abuses could be taking place because the kids just didn't look brutalized.

By contrast, Cambodian government officials pushed back hard on our conclusions. The Interior Ministry spokesperson, Khieu Sopheak, insisted that those in detention "need to do labor and hard work and sweating - that is one of the main ways to make drug-addicted people become normal people." Nean Sokhim, the director of one drug detention centre in Phnom Penh said that his center was voluntary - it was only if people tried to escape that they were drugged.

"It's time to taste what you most fear"

Hard work and sweating - or beatings and starving - do not treat drug dependency, and effective drug dependency treatment is not one-size- fits-all. Medical professionals, not Interior Ministry staff, should be responsible for defining approaches to drug treatment. And defining who is "normal"? That's a slippery slope to widespread detention and abuse; better to take another sip of your fruity cocktail than to think about that.

Rather than quoting again from "Holiday in Cambodia," let me switch to another song, sung by kids at the "Youth Rehabilitation Center" that UNICEF supports. Children we interviewed told us that they were forced to sing it two mornings a week:

Before I was handsome; I was a soldier
Babe the salary I had
I was a soldier; with 2500 [riel]
On the first imprisonment eating the ox's penis three times is exercise....

"Eating an ox's penis" is slang for being beaten with a policeman's baton.

Cambodia is a beautiful country and a wonderful place for a vacation. For too many young Cambodians though it still more hell than haven.

Extortion in NE Prison Leaves Spirits ‘Broken’

By Chiep Mony, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
15 January 2008

Detainees in a prison in the northeast province of Mondolkiri are being held in poor conditions far beyond legal limits, raising suspicions of corruption, a prison official said Tuesday.

Prisoners who can’t bribe their way out of detention grow sick as they are held without trial, and “their spirit is broken,” the official told VOA Khmer, on condition of anonymity.

At least two women and five men are serving time without trial, some as long as one year, in the Mondolkiri facility, the official said.

Charges range from theft to murder to adultery, the official said.

“There are many people, and they are sick,” the official said. “They have not been sentenced. Their spirit is broken.”

“Each person is asked to pay at least $1,500” to be released the official continued. “The smallest amount, $1,500.”

Mondolkiri Prison Chief An Kimleng dismissed the allegations.

“Fines” for detainees prior to trial dates are possible, he said, but “the prison chief has no right to put people on trial.”

Em Veasna, a human rights worker in Mondolkiri, said such cases of extortion were likely, especially if news of them was trickling out.

Mondolkiri Court Chief Lou Sousambath could not be reached for comment Tuesday.