A 24-year-old Australian woman who lives in Sihanoukville claims she was attacked by a local police official at a parking lot near Sokha Beach on Tuesday morning when he became enraged over the location of her motorbike.
Lisa-Marie Nass-Starr said she was just about to leave the parking lot in Buon commune—having just come back from visiting a nearby waterfall with her Cambodian boyfriend and their 2-year- old son—when Pheak Phearum, chief of the provincial intervention police, pulled up in his car and began yelling at them.
“We were just parked in the area for motorbikes near Sokha Beach and the police official that is supposed to be looking after that area came in his car and just started abusing us and telling us to move, so we did,” Ms. Nass-Starr said.
“Then he parked his car and started abusing us,” she said. “He slapped me and hit me and tried to shake my partner off the motorbike, grabbed my son and tried to drag him off the motorbike and was yelling abuse,” she said, adding that she was not seriously injured in the attack.
The Australian said she nevertheless filed a report about the incident at the provincial police headquarters, where another police officer tried to persuade her to sign a second document agreeing to refrain from taking further action.
“The policeman tried to get me to sign a form saying, ‘Everything is fine, we’re not taking it any further and we’ll stay away from him if he stays away from us,’ but I refused,” she said.
Ms. Nass-Starr added that she was also considering filing a complaint with the Australian Embassy over the incident.
Officials at the embassy could not be reached Wednesday.
Mr. Phearum denied attacking Ms. Nass-Starr, claiming he simply had the motorbike moved so it was not blocking the entrance to the parking lot. He said the Australian’s boyfriend, Nhoeng Buntheuy, 23, had refused to comply with his order to move the vehicle.
“I asked them to move the motorbike and [Mr. Buntheuy] replied that he had the right to park his motorbike there,” he said, adding he then ordered his police officers to pull the motorbike away from the entrance.
“As a provincial intervention officer, I know the laws and judicial system and I did not hit them,” he said, going on to accuse Mr. Buntheuy of being from a family of thieves.
“The family members of her husband are thieves; they steal stuff from tourists on the beach…. We [the police] are like bones in their throats.”
Nheb Phorn, deputy minor crimes police chief in the province, said he would continue to look into the case, but that both Mr. Phearum and Ms. Nass-Starr appeared to be at fault.
“There was no slap, only hitting her hand and pulling her hand off the motorbike, but there was no bruise…. Both of them are wrong because they did not forgive each other,” he said.
