U.S. President Barack Obama wants them freed. Prime Minister Hun Sen
says there are none. And while human rights groups say there are many,
they cannot agree on just how to define these “political prisoners,” let
alone how many there might be in Cambodia.
The answer does matter, though.
Mr. Obama warned during his recent visit to Phnom Penh that the
future of U.S.-Cambodian relations depended on their release but
highlighted only one case, that of imprisoned radio station owner and
frequent government critic Mam Sonando.
The U.N. human rights office in Phnom Penh said it did not know how
many political prisoners Cambodia had and was not keeping track. The
U.N.’s human rights envoy to the country, Surya Subedi, said he needed
some time to define what a political prisoner was in the Cambodian
context.
The only organization apparently not struggling with the issue is local human rights group Licadho.
Among the 20 of the 26 Cambodian jails it monitors, Licadho Director
Naly Pilorge said 13 detainees currently fit its definition of political
prisoner: anyone persecuted unjustly for promoting and protecting the
human rights of their community or other groups using non-violence.
Though each of the 13 were charged or convicted for a nominal crime,
from fraud to attempted murder, Ms. Pilorge believes that all but one,
Mr. Sonando, were targeted for actively—but peacefully—opposing various
land evictions.
Sok Sam Oeun, executive director of the Cambodian Defenders Project, a
legal aid NGO, said criminal prosecutions made political cases hard to
discern.
“It’s very hard because sometimes the [criminal] conviction is suspicious,” Mr. Sam Oeun said.
A definition is even harder still when cases are coupled with an
element of organized violence, Mr. Sam Oeun said, noting the Cambodian
Freedom Fighters. Several members were convicted of staging a violent
attack on government buildings and security forces in 2000.
“The Cambodian Freedom Fighters, though it is a crime, it is still political,” Mr. Sam Oeun said.
Because some political prisoners can be involved in acts of violence, some groups prefer the phrase “prisoner of conscience.”
Amnesty International, which coined the phrase, defines a prisoner of
conscience as “someone jailed because of her/his political, religious
or other conscientiously held beliefs, ethnic origin, sex, color,
language, national or social origin, economic status, birth, sexual
orientation or other status, provided they have neither used nor
advocated violence.”
Though Amnesty International’s Cambodia researcher, Rupert Abbott,
said he could not say how many such prisoners existed in Cambodia, some
of the people on Licadho’s list were candidates.
“Particularly in the context of the land crisis in Cambodia—where
forced evictions, land disputes and land grabbing have affected
thousands of people—human rights defenders and peaceful protesters face
harassment, increasing violence, legal action and imprisonment,” he
said. “Amnesty International would define some of those imprisoned as
[prisoners of conscience].”
Mr. Abbott also included the 13 women arrested in May while
peacefully protesting against a Phnom Penh land eviction and convicted
that same month on charges of inciting rebellion and illegally occupying
land after a summary trial. Sentenced to two-and-a-half years each, the
women have since been released but remain convicted.
Rights workers also included those convicted in recent years for
distributing anti-government leaflets, usually on grounds of incitement.
In 2010, a World Food Program employee was convicted of incitement for
printing out pages from the website of K.I. [Khmer Intelligence] Media
and sentenced to six months in prison.
But none of these cases add up to a consensus on the definition of political prisoner or prisoner of conscience.
Even in Burma, where America very publicly made the release of
political prisoners a key condition for lifting sanctions on the
country, the U.S. is still trying to figure out what the phrase should
mean.
Just last month, the U.S. government’s Congressional Research Service (CRS) said a definition was in the works.
“The State Department is actively discussing the political prisoner
issue—including the definition of political prisoners—with the Burmese
government, opposition parties and representatives of some ethnic
groups,” the CRS said in a briefing paper.
Borrowing figures from the Burmese government and NGOs, the CRS said
the government of Burmese President Thein Sein had nonetheless released
hundreds of political prisoners over the past year and that anywhere
from 128 to 914 remained.
Faced with the definition dilemma, the U.N.’s human rights envoy to
Burma, Tomas Ojea Quintana, offered his own, two-pronged description of a
prisoner of conscience.
By Mr. Quintana’s definition, a prisoner of conscience is anyone
prosecuted for breaking laws that impede “reasonable enjoyment of
freedom of expression, opinion, peaceful assembly or association” and
who is denied access to a court or only has access to a court that lacks
independence or denies due process.
In past reports, Cambodia’s U.N. envoy Mr. Subedi has described an abjectly corrupt court system here.
“Corruption seems to be widespread at all levels in the judiciary,”
he said in a 2010 report. “Because the laws needed to protect the judges
are not there, the judges are treated as civil servants and seem to
rely on patronage and political protection rather than on the laws for
the security of their jobs. This has resulted in individual judges and
prosecutors compromising their independence.”
Like other local groups in Cambodia, the Community Legal Education
Center (CLEC), a legal aid NGO, has neither a definition for political
prisoners nor a number. But CLEC program manager Houn Chundy said
despite what the government claimed, there was no doubt Cambodia had
them.
For all the prime minister’s denials, he said, “people, the public, see that they are politically related.”
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