CAMBODIA: A police officer allegedly tortured and illegally detained in custody due to a land dispute

Dear friends,

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has learned that a police was arrested on 19 February 2008 and allegedly tortured and ill treated in police custody in Kep seaside town, Cambodia. He was confined to a windowless cell and shackled at night. Despite having wounds on his body, he has been denied access to medical treatment. While in detention he has been consistently pressurised to vacate the land on which his house stands.

CASE DETAILS: (Sources: Ouch Leng, ADHOC, Phnom Penh; Pring Pov’s wife, Yin Neang, Kep village, Kep commune, Kep district, Kep seaside town)

Mr. Pring Pov (40) is a police officer posted at the seaside town of Kep, in the southwest of Cambodia.

According to information received, in the morning of 19 February 2008, Pring Pov was arrested by his superior Mr. Ing Sam Ol, Kep police commissioner, on charges of “disobeying orders from his superiors”.

After his arrest, he was handcuffed, shackled and bundled in a car which took him straight to the Police Discipline Unit located at Samaki village, Trapeang Krasaing commune, Russey Keo district, some 20 kilo meters away from Phnom Penh, where he has been detained ever since. Pring was summoned to a meeting at Kep town police commission office in the morning on the same day.

When his wife Yin Neang was permitted to see him in police custody on February 20, Ping claimed that he had been detained in a 4m x 4m cell without any ventilation and had been shackled at night. He was allowed to go out of his cell during the day on 9 March.

According to Yin Neang, she saw blood and wounds around his wrists and ankles, and bruises on his chest. He was crying and talked very little when other police officers were hanging around him. Even though his mental and physical condition worsened, the National Police Commissioner, Hock Lundy, did not allow any doctor to visit Pring. Yin Neang brought doctors in succession towards the end of February but medical treatment was denied.

According to sources, Pring Pov would be released on condition that he dismantle his house and vacate his land without expecting any compensation, which he has refused to do so far.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

On 31 January 2008, senior police officers who were Pring’s superiors, including Kep police commissioner Ing Sam Ol and Kep district police inspector Mom Sitha, began to pressurise Pring to vacate his land. Pring recorded all these pressure tactics in his diary. On 17 February, at Kep Police Commission Office and in the presence of Sean, head of Kep village, they forced him and his wife to put the thumbprint on a contract in which Pring and his wife “agree to move out of the land if they are given appropriate compensation”. His superiors had the contract, but refused to give a copy of it to Pring and his wife despite Pring’s pleas.

His 42m x 60 m plot of land is located in Kep village, Kep commune, Kep district in Kep seaside town. Pring and his family cleared and owned that land since 1991. In 1994, the governor of the town, Chea Chhut, forced Pring to give it to the then Princess Marie Ranariddh whose husband, Prince Norodom Ranariddh was then president of the FUNCINPEC Party of which both Chea and Pring were members. FUNCIPEC was the ruling party after the elections held in 1993.

Chea also ordered Pring to guard the land which was then lying vacant, and receive a monthly allowance of 10 US Dollars and 30 kilograms of rice for his service. Pring received only a month’s allowance after that forced deal and has since received nothing. In 2005, Pring built his house on that land. Meanwhile, Chea, a FUNCINPEC army general, was killed in the 1997 coup. The FUNCINPEC political fortune fell. Marie divorced Ranariddh in 2006, used her maiden name of Eng Marie and became a senior government minister while Ranariddh was ousted from FUNCINPEC’s presidency.

However, Eng Marie has never come to see the disputed land. In January 2008, Pring’s family received two successive visits from three women from her office. In the first visit, they asked them where the disputed land was located. The women then made a note of everything he had in his house and on his land. They discussed with him the nature and amount of compensation he was expecting. Pring asked for 30,000 US Dollars when the price of a similar plot in that seaside town was around 100,000 US Dollars. Eng Marie then lodged a complaint against him at the Police Department in Phnom Penh.

Pring’s arrest was made without any arrest warrant. His detention in police custody has far exceeded the legally permitted period of 72 hours within which he must be brought to court to be charged (art. 96 of the code of criminal procedure). He has had no right to legal counsel within the first 24 hours of his arrest (art. 98 of the same code). Nor does he have any right to medical treatment. The medical treatment of persons in police custody is left to the discretionary power of the prosecutor and the custody officer (art. 99 of the same code).

However, detention exceeding the legally permitted period, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment are violations of human rights, and are therefore forbidden and punishable by imprisonment from one to five years (arts.17, 22 and 57 of the UNTAC law of 1992).

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS:

In recent years, there land disputes are on the increase in Cambodia. This phenomenon has been known as land grabbing, when the powerful and the rich in connivance with powers that be, grab land from the weak and the poor offering then compensation well below the current market price.

Invariably, in order to forcefully evict land owners from their own lands, land grabbers have an unholy nexus with local authorities, the police and courts officials to force other parties to accept such offers and vacate their homes and lands.  Those who resist are falsely implicated and arrested in a bid to oust them. Forced evictions have been carried in recent years, adversely affecting tens of thousands of families. Amnesty International’s report on 11 February 2008 says that at least 150,000 people in Cambodia or slightly over one per cent of its population are living at risk of being evicted.

Cambodia has ratified both, the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the Optional Protocol to it. It has not enacted a law against acts of torture and ill treatment, nor created a national mechanism for the prevention of such acts as stipulated in the Convention and Optional Protocol.

SUGGESTED ACTION:
Please write letters to the authorities listed below requesting them to immediately release Pring Pov: conduct an investigation into his arrest and torture; and take action again violators of his rights.

The AHRC has also written letters to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Question of Torture and Adequate housing, Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights–Cambodia and Special Representative of the Secretary-General for human rights in Cambodia calling for their intervention in this case.

To support this case, please click here: SEND APPEAL LETTER