The Cambodian government is to be congratulated on its ratification of the Optional Protocol and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT) on 19 January 2007. In doing do, the country has recognized the problem of torture and has voiced its trust in the implementation of the OPCAT to address this problem. As it has been ratified, the OPCAT legal clout in Cambodia and the government should in earnest enforce it and fulfil all its obligations under this new international instrument. Among these obligations, it must allow the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, unhindered visits to all places of detention, while maintaining, designating or establishing one or several independent national preventive mechanisms (NPMs) for the prevention of torture at the domestic level. These mechanisms must be composed of independent experts and have power to make regular unimpeded visits to all places of detention.
Pending the visits by the Subcommittee, along with the creation of functioning NPMs, the Cambodian government should take immediate action under existing laws to prevent and combat torture. This can be done by incorporating additional provisions for this purpose in the code of criminal procedure and the penal code that is now being drafted. The Asian Human Rights Commission puts forth five crucial recommendations.
First, prosecutors and judges must exercise their power as stipulated in article 9(1) of the UNTAC Law of 1992 and make regular visits to prisons. Should they find out any torture or any other ill treatment suffered by any prisoner, they must take action against its perpetrator(s) as stipulated in article 12(1) prohibiting torture or ill treatment, as well as articles 22(2) and 57 on punishment for human rights abuses.
Secondly, the draft code of criminal procedure which is now in the Parliament for adoption must recognise the rights of persons detained by the police immediately after their arrest, namely, their right of access to a lawyer and to a doctor, and the right to have their detention notified to a relative or another third party of their choice. The draft code must also make the presence of a lawyer mandatory at any police interrogation. As it is now, the draft code does not recognise all these rights, and suspects can have access to a lawyer only 24 hours after their arrest.
Thirdly, the same code must specify clearly the role of public prosecutors and judges in the prevention of torture and other ill treatment. These judicial officers must for instance check the body and psychological state of suspects or the accused brought before them, give serious consideration to their complaints of such torture or other ill-treatment, and request a forensic medical examination whenever there are grounds to believe that a person brought before them could have been the victim of ill-treatment.
Fourthly, the penal code now being drafted must provide for crimes of torture and other ill treatment in their different forms such as physical torture, mental/psychological torture and pharmacological torture, and the punishment for these crimes, based on the Convention against Torture, decisions of the UN Human Rights Committee and laws of other countries.
Fifthly, permission granted to NGOs to visit prisons should be extended to allow them access to other places of detention and to meet in private with persons deprived of liberty in prisons and similar institutions.
The AHRC urges donors, UN agencies, international agencies and the international human rights community to work with the Cambodian government, parliament and courts to comply with CAT and OPCAT and adopt the administrative, legislative and judicial measures proposed above in order to set up national preventive mechanisms, discharge Cambodia’s obligations under CAT and OPCAT, as well as to prevent and combat acts of torture and other ill-treatment.
