Battambang Prisoners Ring in the New Year

More than 500 inmates at Battambang provincial prison spent Saturday dancing to the pulse of rented loudspeakers, playing traditional Khmer New Year games and praying, like others throughout Cambodia, for a peaceful and happy new year.

An unusual sight for the inside of a prison compound, perhaps. But the weekend’s party—and the celebrations that will continue through this week to mark each night of the new year—are part of prison director Kang Saren’s philosophy that inmates who are allowed some of life’s most basic pleasures will be happier, healthier and less dangerous.

“We want people to know prisoners also have full rights as others,” he said. “The only [right] they don’t have is walking outside of the prison’s compound.”

Battambang prison, which has been criticized by rights groups in the past for a lackadaisical approach to prisoners’ welfare, has held some version of a New Year’s celebration for prisoners since 1993. The celebration has since blossomed into a daylong party organized by prison police with nightly dances during the three-day holiday.

At Saturday’s party, “prisoners gave food to monks as people outside are doing for the Khmer traditional ceremony. They were enjoying the ceremony,” said Yin Mengly, Battambang coordinator for the rights organization Adhoc, who attended the festival.

“During the traditional ceremony, they feel happy and they forget everything,” Kang Saren said, adding, “they have no ideas to break [out of] prison secretly when we have treated them well.”

There are 523 prisoners in Battambang provincial prison, and 1,400 in Phnom Penh’s Prey Sar.

During Khmer New Year, 200 to 300 inmates with the lightest sentences will be allowed out of their cells to listen to monks’ sermons, Prey Sar prison director Kim Saren said last month.

“We do not allow music and dancing during new year because of security,” he said.

In light of the April 1 jail break at the Second Correctional Center at the Prey Sar prison compound, in which 21 inmates fled after sawing through the corroded metal bars of their cell, the potential for unrest seems all the more real.

Kang Saren acknowledged that Battambang prison’s crumbling buildings could be easily overpowered by determined inmates.

There have been a few escape attempts, he said, especially when inmates have been taken outside of prison grounds for medical visits. But reform has been slowly under way since 1993, he said.

Prisoners are allowed daily visits from family members to boost morale as well as health. Families bring food to supplement the meager government-mandated prison rations. Tutors offer instruction in English, Thai and Chinese, and Kang Saren is currently searching for a donated sewing machine and assistants to teach vocational sewing lessons.

Adhoc director Thun Saray praised Battambang prison last month, saying that it was a good example to other prisons.

“If other prisons follow this way, it helps to reduce crime and other bad acts,” Thun Saray said.

“When we treat them well…they will do good things when they leave prison. But if they are tortured in prison or treated bad, they will [seek] revenge when they leave,” he said.

While Kang Saren’s strategy is an improvement, some observers said, much work remains to be done.

“Battambang prison police have treated prisoners better, compared to other prisons in the country, even if it has not yet reached international standards,” Yin Mengly said. ­

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