Anything but the rule of law!

(2007)

Article published in September 2007 in "Union View" n°5, also available at http://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/CambodgeEN.pdf

Despite the much-heralded media show trial of a few former Khmer Rouge leaders in 2008, Cambodia’s legal authorities are incompetent and collude with the government. Clear examples were the trial following the assassination of trade unionist Chea Vichea, which resulted in 20-year prison sentences for two innocent people, and other cases linked to murders and violent attacks on trade unionists.

On 22 January 2004, Chea Vichea was shot in cold blood whilst reading his newspaper near a kiosk in the centre of Phnom Penh. As President of the FTUWKC (1), Chea Vichea was one of the most influential trade unionists in Cambodia. He continuously complained about violations of the rights of Cambodian workers and their inability to lead decent lives with the poverty wages they earned. News of the assassination sparked vigorous international and national protests. Chea Mony, his brother, took over the leadership of the FTUWKC and threatened to hold a huge demonstration in the streets of Phnom Penh if the perpetrators were not found and tried quickly.

The authorities were scared by this threat since many people suspected the government or the employers of being behind the murder. So the government wanted to find the criminals quickly to calm the people’s anger. A few days later the police announced the arrest of two suspects: Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeun. Appearing before the media the two men protested their innocence. Born Samnang shouted that his confession had been secured through torture. In March, a judge who dismissed the case for lack of evidence was sacked. On 1st August 2005, the court of Phnom Penh sentenced both men to twenty years in prison based on the confession by Born Samnang. Apart from that forced confession, no evidence linking the two men to the murder was presented at the trial.

The only witness to the murder of Chea Vichea is the owner of the newspaper kiosk where he was shot, Va Sothy, who is currently living in exile for fear of reprisals. She has always maintained that the two arrested men were not the murderers. In a statement before a notary in Bangkok, she explained that she had provided a detailed description of the murderer of Chea Vichea and his accomplice, but that she was too scared of reprisals to cooperate with the police (she saw the murderer again at her kiosk one month after the murder). She complained that the police had repeatedly tried to get her to identify a sketch of a person as being that of the murderer, which she refused to do. Yet that was the sketch that was published in the papers, accompanied by a police statement saying that it had been corroborated by a witness.

Why have these two scapegoats?

On top of the government’s reluctance to hold a proper investigation to find the real perpetrators of the crime, why were these two men chosen? It appears that Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeun were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. A few weeks before his arrest Born Samnang had had some serious problems at work. “He was a representative for a pharmaceutical company and had made a few business mistakes”, explains his mother, Noun Kim Sry. “The company was asking him to reimburse the 5,080 dollars that had been lost through his mistakes. When he came and told me that and when I realised that the company could attack our family if he didn’t manage to pay up, I got angry. My husband left me a long time ago and I live alone with five children. To protect my family and avoid having to sell our property, I asked one of my daughters to send the local authorities a form stating that I no longer recognised Born Samnang as my son. She came back a bit later and told me that the administration official had compared the photo of my son on that form with the sketch of the murderers of Chea Vichea, which was stuck on their office wall. The faces are very different but I was immediately alarmed. I asked my daughter to go and get the form back but the officials refused to return it”.

The police arrested Born Samnang a few days later. “They beat up my son badly, trying to get him to confess to the murder of Chea Vichea, but he did not even know him. They told him they knew he had some big problems, that I wanted to disown him, that his fiancée was also in prison and that his problems would be sorted out later if he confessed to the crime. As he still refused to do so, they took his hand and placed his right thumbprint at the bottom of a document. I don’t know what was written on it, but that was when the press were told that he was the murderer and had admitted it. I’m very sad at my own action. If I hadn’t reacted so strongly when he told me about his problem they would never have used his situation for accusing him”. But Born Samnang had an alibi: on the day of murder he was celebrating the Chinese New Year with his fiancée 90 kilometres from the crime scene, and a lot of people were with him. Some of the witnesses have since been threatened, however.

Sok Sam Oeun’s case is quite similar. He was also celebrating the Chinese New Year on the day of the crime, in Au Bekkaam, 7 kilometres from Phnom Penh. “He had been spending the day drinking and eating with some other people”, explains Vorn Thun, his father. “One of those people is the son of a top official in one of the ruling parties. On 28 January 2004, my son was arrested while he was in Au Bekkaam. They did not tell him why he was being arrested or where they were taking him. Since he wouldn’t stop shouting in the police car that he had not done anything, the police hit him with rifle butts and stuck his head in a plastic bag. I think that this powerful person was trying to get rid of my son, whom he owed some money. I only learnt of his arrest on 30 January, when my sister saw him on the television and it was announced that he had killed Chea Vichea. He never confessed to the crime. He is stubborn and would never admit such a thing if he didn’t do it. In any case, he didn’t know Born Samnang at all, and they are from different provinces. I begged the people who had been with him on the day of the crime to come forward as witnesses at the trial, but they all refused to do so: they were scared and their first thought was for their own safety”.

Fears for the health of the two innocent parties

Those close to Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeun are very worried: so far Cambodia has ignored national and international pressure to release the two innocent men. But they are both in bad health. “The conditions in the prison have weakened my son”, says Born Samnang’s mother. “He has got very thin and often gets temperatures and migraines. There are ten or twenty people in his cell, the air is unbreathable, and he can only breathe normally when he’s in the room for visitors. He has kept his spirits up, partly because he knows about the national and international campaigns for his release, but his health is deteriorating”. The same goes for Sok Sam Oeun: “He has got stomach pains from the awful food and has lost all feeling below the knees”, says his father, ”his cell is roughly 7 metres by 4 and there are always 17 to 30 people in it. Since the cell is so narrow the prisoners can never lie on the floor at the same time, so they have to keep sitting with bended knees, pressed against each other. They take it in turns to stand up so that the others occasionally get the chance to stretch their legs”.

Two other trade unionists have been shot in cold blood in Cambodia since the murder of Chea Vichea. In May 2004, it was the turn of Ros Sovannareth, President of the FTUWKC at the Trinunggal Komara factory, to be murdered. So far there has been no independent and impartial investigation. And on 24 February 2007 another murder was committed. Hy Vuthy, President of the FTUWKC at the textile factory  Suntex, was going home on his moped in the early morning after his night shift when two helmeted men also on a motorbike shot him with three bullets. They threw his body into a rubbish tip before leaving. Va Sopheak, his wife, arrived at the crime scene a few minutes later. “He was still breathing faintly, but the police refused to let me take him to hospital although there was an ambulance there. They said my husband was already dead. As I carried on screaming they finally allowed me to take Hy Vuthy to a hospital on a motorbike, but he died on the way”. The witnesses to the murder have so far refused to speak up for fear of reprisals from the murderers. The widow and her two children have to move house regularly, however, as she has received threats since the murder.

The ITUC has joined the democratic trade unions and civil society organisations in Cambodia and many human rights organisations (including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch) in calling for the release of the two innocent men imprisoned after the murder of Chea Vichea, and for proper investigations into the murders of Ros Sovannareth and Hy Vuthy. As it is only a few months before the start of the trial of the former members of the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian justice system finally needs to recover its credibility.

(1) Free Trade Union of Workers of the Kingdom of Cambodia

                                                                                              Samuel Grumiau

BOX :

A trade unionist’s courage

Death threats, beatings, dismissal and a blacklist… Trade unionist Chi Simun, of the Bright Sky factory, has faced the whole range of anti-union repression Chi Simun is lucky to be alive. On the morning of 3 May 2006, the FTUWKC President at the Bright Sky textile factory, was walking home after his night shift when he was attacked outside the factory gates by 7 or 8 people, who hit him hard in the head and shoulders with iron bars and sticks. “I had already received death threats in the past, including from leaders of a rival trade union”, he explains. “The thugs said nothing as they hit me, but they wanted to kill me and didn’t stop hitting me when I hit the ground and was bleeding heavily. One of them said ‘don’t leave him alive’. They had a photo of my face, the one on my factory access card. How did they get it? There must have been some connivance from people in the factory. Earlier on, some FTUWKC members had seen some thugs leaving the office of one of the Bright Sky managers, carrying an envelope”. In addition to eye and head wounds, Chi Simun needed 15 stitches after the attack. He couldn’t go back to work till 12 May. “That day, the workers from the FTUWKC were pleased to see me back and alive, but the leader of the rival trade union greeted me with “aha, the sick pig has come back to work”. Chi Simun, who had recognised some of his assailants gave their names and other information to the local police, but no enquiry was opened. Worse still: on 22 May, when leaving his workplace after the night shift, he saw a group of 20 thugs waiting for him outside the factory gates again. He waited inside the factory until daybreak, which was when the thugs left.

The inter-union rivalry at Bright Sky and the disputes with the management about the excessive use of short-term contracts did not end with the attacks on Chi Simun and other union representatives. On 16 October, the management called in the police to break up a strike organised by the FTUWKC in front of the factory. The police fired in the air and used their truncheons. As the workers were fleeing, a 24 year-old pregnant woman, Muth Savy, was hit by a police bullet and had to be rushed to the hospital, where she lost her baby. Many other workers were also injured by the police that day.

Shortly after those incidents, the management of Bright Sky announced the ending of night time production, dismissing over 1,800 workers… almost all the members of the FTUWKC. Bright Sky then sent other factories a list of names of the members and leaders of the union with photos. “Since I’ve been certain I’m on that blacklist everyone has been refusing to recruit me”, says Chi Simun. “Sometimes I manage to get a job for a couple of weeks, by using the name of a friend who is not on the blacklist, at some small sub-contracting firm”.

The former union delegate is bitter. “I’ve sacrificed a lot to help other workers and get labour legislation applied. The management offered me a large amount of money for giving up my union work, and some trade unionists accepted such offers, but I have always refused. I’m 27 and have a wife and a 5-year old daughter, but I have no job prospects”.

                                                                                                          Sam Grumiau