Thursday, August 30, 2007
Everyday.com.kh
Translated from Khmer by Socheata
Senior police officers from the Ministry of Interior (MoI) were taking oath at the Appeals Court in the afternoon of 27 August 2007, to become judicial police officers, following the ratification of the new criminal code by the king on 10 August, and its effective date of use set on 21 August. During the oath taking ceremony, these senior police officers used strong wordings, such as: “If we violate the law, or misapply the law, may the genies and all the magic objects destroy us, and kill us with bullets, lightning, (may) cars or motorcycles hit us (dead), (may) the tigers eat us, (may) the snakes bite us, and let it be that in the future, we should be separated from our parents, let our children be separated from us, for several hundreds lives to come.”
6 comments:
yea...ok, as if they would keep those words. Money is above the law in Cambodia. Afterall, it is still in that survival of the fittest mode. Screw everyone else, I gotta feed my family kind of mode.
I found out long time ago that most Cambodian people are very superstitious and for them to use such language mean that they are very serious!
Yea, I know they are superstitious. But trust me, money can kill any superstition in Cambodia.
They're going to follow what Hun Sen did after he took the oath in front of Angkor Wat with other high-ranking officials to mark the beginning of the new government term in office (after the election and the deal with Funcinpec). There are sentences in the oath that say the officials will not take bribes and commit other bad stuff.
Soon after that oath, his family monks organised another Buddhist ceremony, called "Lear Sambort" or annulment of oath, at Hun Sen's residence in Takhmao. This is quite acceptable in the Buddhist tradition. It's still a superstition but this one works in the bad boy's favour!
Well, I guess if that prophecy was actually applied to corrupt policemen, first there would be a shortage of policemen (would there be any one left alive?), then the country would be a much better place...
By the way, policemen and military have been wiping out all tigers of Cambodia. There are less than 20 remaining alive and decreasing...
Systemic corruption of Hun Sen judicial systems not only denies Khmer citizens the basic human rights, but hinders economic development and sometimes pushes aggrieved people to violence, I am talking not just about outright bribery, but political bias or interference, the influence of money, which can have a profound impact on all of people, undermining people trust in public institutions and the Hun Sen government capacity to deliver fair and impartial outcomes. Corruption is an insidious plague that has a wide range of corrosive effects on Khmer societies, corruption undermines democracy and the rule of law, leads to violations of human rights, distorts economic development, erodes the quality of life, and allows organized crime to flourish, taking the oath is meaningless.
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