Amnesty International has painted Cambodia as a land where the rich and powerful use the judicial system to “silence people protesting against evictions and land grabs,” in its latest global human rights report, which was released yesterday.
The “Amnesty International Report 2010” documents human rights “abuses” in 159 countries during the 2009 calendar year.
For Cambodia, the report cites several ways in which citizens’ rights suffered at the hand of authorities: forced property evictions, prosecution of human rights defenders, stifling freedom of expression, inadequate legal and institutional developments, and a failure to prevent violence against women and young girls.
On a more positive note, the report recognized the Khmer Rouge tribunal’s prosecution of Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, as a development that allowed survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime “to have their suffering acknowledged.”
“Forced evictions continued to affect thousands of families living across the country, predominantly people living in poverty,” Amnesty International states in the report’s overview of the Cambodian human rights situation.
“A wave of legal actions against housing rights defenders, journalists and other critical voices stifled freedom of expression,” the overview continued.
The report makes specific mention of last July’s forced displacement of villagers from the Group 78 community in Phnom Penh as an example of government authorities’ use of a “flawed legal process” to evict families from their homes.
“[In 2009] the rich and powerful continued to abuse the criminal justice system to silence people protesting against evictions and land grabs,” the report says, adding that Amnesty’s records show that at least 149 activists were arrested by police last year for protesting against evictions.
Amnesty’s findings also make special mention of the situation facing female rape victims, saying that reports show that “rapes of women and girls…continued to increase, with the age of victims falling.”
“Prosecution of rapists remained rare, due to poor law enforcement, corruption in the courts and widespread use of out-of-court financial settlements,” the report states.
“Settlements were typically arranged by law enforcement officials and stipulated that the victim withdraw any criminal complaint.”
Amnesty’s annual report does not rank nations on the perceived strength of their human rights records, nor does it provide explicit recommendations for governments.
Amnesty’s Cambodia researcher Brittis Edman said yesterday that the conclusions from the report were obvious.
“Cambodian authorities must put an end to forced evictions for commercial development purposes…. Thousands are being uprooted from their homes,” Ms Edman said by telephone from London.
“With the government donor meeting coming up next week, Amnesty International believes that the government and donor partners should use human rights as the yardstick for measuring Cambodia’s performance.”
Ms Edman said that the increase in violence against women was the most startling trend uncovered by Amnesty in Cambodia last year.
“Violence against women…stands out as a huge battleground for human rights in Cambodia,” she said, adding that the number of out-of-court settlements between victims and perpetrators was testament to the problem.
“The faith people have in the authorities is so low, that taking money from a perpetrator may seem like the only…justice they can achieve,” she said.
Phay Siphan, spokesman for the Council of Ministers, said yesterday that Cambodia welcomed critical commentary from international organizations, as long as they did not “criticize too much.”
In March, the government said it would “redouble its efforts” on human rights after accepting all 91 nonbinding recommendations made by member states at the concluding session of Cambodia’s first ever Universal Periodic Review at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Among the key recommendations accepted by the government are the proposed ratification of several international human rights conventions, tackling gender inequality, improving children’s rights, ensuring freedom of expression and prioritizing the issue of land evictions.
Mr Siphan said the government was working hard to uphold the rights of its citizens, especially through the creation of new laws and a fair judicial system.
“We need to ensure we have a competent and quality judicial system to ensure that human rights are protected,” he said. “Through the creation of new laws, step-by-step we are improving the rights of all Cambodians. We are not asleep on this issue…. We have the will to make the situation better and better.”
Cambodian Defenders Project Executive Director Sok Sam Oeun said he believed the government has slightly improved its record on human rights.
“It is certainly not perfect, but there are small signs of improvement,” he said, pointing to the fact that more people were being made aware of their rights by the government.
“We want the government to focus more on creating judicial mechanisms that will protect human rights,” he said.
