Only 2-3% of police take bribes from criminal suspects???

Police chief admits 2-3% of police take bribes from criminal suspects

By Cheang Sokha
Phnom Penh Post, Issue 16 / 23, November 16 - 29, 2007

Once again, the city police flunk the corruption test. Two weeks ago it was the traffic police. This time it's the police who are supposed to be carrying out the arrest warrants for robbery.

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court confirmed last week for the Post that more than 1,000 arrest warrants issued by the court dating back to 2004 have not been carried out by the police, amid allegations that police routinely solicit bribes from suspected criminals' families to evade arrest.

"The court had the role to issue warrants and the police are the enforcer in arresting suspects," said Municipal Court Chief Chev Keng. "So far more than 1,000 cases remain in the hands of police."

Keng made his comments following a report by local newspaper Kampuchea Thmey which quoted a court official as saying the rising number of armed robberies in Phnom Penh and on the outskirts of the city are a result of the failed arrest warrants.

"Some arrest warrants police carried out properly," the unnamed official said. "But some others they did not, in exchange for monthly bribery."

The court official said many of the cases are criminal cases of robbery, or other types of theft such as pickpockets.

Asked by the Post about the allegations, Phnom Penh police commissioner Touch Naroth said it was true that some police are guilty.

"I recognized that only 2 or 3 percent of them did that, but with minor crimes, not serious crimes," he said.

Naruth also said the police cannot get all the suspects because they move from place to place to escape arrest.

"We are working hard to keep social security," Naroth said. "If we do not arrest the perpetrators, the problem will come back to the police, not to the court."

He said compared with last year, crime is down 30% in Phnom Penh.

Meanwhile at Phnom Penh municipal hall, Governor Kep Chuktema said authorities are ashamed they cannot crack down on repeated robberies of the so called AK-47 Group, which threatens people in the suburbs. Many of the AK-47 robberies occurred in Dangkor district of Phnom Penh, in Kandal Stung and Ang Snuol district of Kandal and recently spread to Kampong Speu province but police never arrest and bring them to jail.

"The case of AK-47 rifle robbery is a new issue for police but sooner or later they will be arrested," said police chief Naruth.

Sok Sam Oeun, executive director of Cambodian Defenders' Project, said the court should investigate irregularities in the work of police after arrest warrants are issued to make sure police are enforcing them, but in reality the courts are sometimes to blame.

"When irregularities happen involving a perpetrator neither the court nor police dare to take responsibility." Sam Oeun said sometimes courts issue warrants without waiting for a police request, which is contrary to procedure.

In 2005, the Ministry of Interior found nearly 200 court cases within Phnom Penh municipal court that had irregularities regarding the release of suspects.

Prime Minister Hun Sen's "iron fist" campaign to reform the court system was initiated due to these kind of problems. As part of that, eight Phnom Penh municipal court judges and prosecutors were expelled, suspended and rotated. However a year later they were re-appointed to work in different courtrooms by the Supreme Council of Magistracy, chaired by King Norodom Sihamoni.

Dr Lao Mong Hay Commentary: Cambodia's extremist political culture

HONG KONG, Jul. 18
LAO MONG HAY
UPI Asia Online
Column: Rule by Fear

At the end of May this year, the London-based environmental organization Global Witness published a report in which it held a "kleptocratic elite" close to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen responsible for illegal logging. A week later, instead of addressing the issues that had been raised, the Cambodian government simply banned all national media from publishing any extract from the report, and Hun Neng, Hun Sen's brother and provincial governor, was quoted as saying that "if (Global Witness staff) come to Cambodia I will hit them until their heads are broken."

Almost at the same time Supreme Buddhist Patriarch Tep Vong defrocked Tim Sakhorn, the abbot of a monastery, without due process as required in the Buddhist monastic code for disciplining monks. According to the code, an accused monk can defend himself before a community or committee of his peers. Without citing any evidence, Tep claimed that Sakhorn's "conduct was contrary to Buddhist discipline" and his misconduct impaired relations between Cambodia and Vietnam. He alleged that Sakhorn had been using the monastery for "propaganda" against Vietnam, a country with which the Cambodian government has close links.

Upon his defrocking, Sakhorn was taken away in an unmarked car and deported to Vietnam, his country of origin. He was deported without due process of law to investigate his alleged wrongdoings, in flagrant violation of his rights as a Cambodian citizen. Since this incident, the abbot has disappeared.

The drastic and arbitrary measures against Global Witness and Tim Sakhorn are but the latest developments in the history of extremism that runs deep in the political culture of present and past regimes in Cambodia. In 2006, Hun Sen refused to see Prof. Yash Ghai, the U.N. special representative for human rights in Cambodia, following the latter's negative report on human rights in the country. Instead, Hun Sen requested that the U.N. secretary-general dismiss Ghai. In June of this year, without denying the veracity of yet another negative report by Ghai, Hun Sen, who had refused yet again to see him to discuss the issues Ghai had raised, simply decided not to accept any longer his mandate in Cambodia and called on the U.N. Human Rights Council to review Ghai's appointment.

A few months earlier, alarmed by the extent of land-grabbing and the prospect of a "peasant revolution," Hun Sen declared a "war against land-grabbers." This issue could have been addressed through due process of law if the courts and other competent institutions were independent and functional.

Hun Sen in 2004 introduced an "iron fist" policy, allegedly aimed at ridding the judiciary of corruption, and a few judges and other judicial officers were tried. However, they were acquitted for lack of evidence. This drastic measure followed his 1999 order to rearrest people released by the courts in defiance of the principle of res judicata, i.e., double jeopardy. No remedies have been proposed to correct this arbitrary use of the justice system.

In March 1997, Sam Rainsy, currently the opposition leader, and his followers staged a peaceful demonstration against the "communist judiciary." The government did not like their action, and four grenades were thrown at the demonstrators, killing 19 protestors and injuring more than 100. In July of the same year, the two ruling coalition parties at the time, the Cambodian People's Party and FUNCINPEC, whose relations had been tenuous over sharing power, resorted to arms to fight each other in the streets of Phnom Penh, resulting in the annihilation of FUNCINPEC as a political force, despite their pledge under oath not to resort to force to settle disputes.

Extremism was also the hallmark of previous regimes. Prince Sihanouk, when he was head of state in the 1960s, suddenly decided, without prior planning, to nationalize the banking and other important sectors of the economy following a private bank scandal in which the government lost a substantial deposit. At the same time, he alleged that U.S. aid and the "dollar god" were corrupting influences and, as a measure to end that corruption, refused to receive substantial U.S. aid. He also cut off diplomatic ties with the United States. All these measures and others eventually led the country into turmoil and to Sihanouk's downfall.

In 1970, Gen. Lon Nol resorted to force, instead of peaceful means, to rid the country of the sanctuaries and bases of communist Vietnamese forces in the border regions, thereby engulfing the country in the Vietnam War. He also made a drastic decision to overthrow Sihanouk and the monarchy.

The Khmer Rouge emerged as the victors of that war in 1975, communist rulers who went to even much greater extremes. They were not happy, for example, with Cambodia's feudal, corrupt and unjust society at the time and rushed to destroy it. They were not happy with townsfolk and were not able to feed them. They thus forced them to the countryside at gunpoint to till the land and grow their own food until their death. They also alleged that money was corrupting. They therefore just abolished it. Furthermore, if they were not happy with someone, they simply killed him.

Now Cambodia has swung from extreme communism to capitalism which, in the absence of the rule of law, has gone to the opposite extreme. In the society destroyed by the Khmer Rouge, the biggest landholding was 132 hectares, and large landholdings were rare. Now Cambodian society has quickly become a feudal society ruled by a corrupt oligarchy under a democratic cloak in which the powerful and their cronies own up to tens, or even hundreds of thousands, of hectares of land during a time when the population has doubled and landlessness has increased. Cambodia's countryside very much resembles the English countryside during the period of enclosure.

Ironically, even Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge ideologue now about to face trial for the Killing Field atrocities, has said that the society he and his comrades destroyed was better than the present one.

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(Lao Mong Hay is currently a senior researcher at the Asian Human Rights Commission in Hong Kong. He was previously director of the Khmer Institute of Democracy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and a visiting professor at the University of Toronto in 2003. In 1997, he received an award from Human Rights Watch and the Nansen Medal in 2000 from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.)