Chin Malin, Cambodia Human Rights Committee spokesperson. Post Pix
Since 2002, there have been 73 cases of “mob justice”, leaving 57 people dead and 16 wounded, according to an Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) report released on Thursday on deaths, beatings and abuse carried out by the “people’s court” in Cambodia.
However, the OHCHR said the numbers might be lower than actual figures since cases were not always reported or recorded as linked to “popular justice”.
The report said extrajudicial violence occurred due to a lack of trust in the police, the court and prison systems, including perceived corruption affecting investigations.
It said mob justice was a violation of human rights, such as the right to life, a fair trial, the presumption of innocence and to be free from torture. It is also a breach of the country’s Criminal Code.
Some of the solutions, the OHCHR said, included timely intervention by the police or other local authorities, raising awareness among the population that “popular justice” was a crime, and ensuring effective investigation and prosecution in all cases of extrajudicial violence as well as other crimes.
This could help build trust in the authorities and encourage people not to take justice into their own hands, the OHCHR said.
The report is the first prepared by the OHCHR since 2002 focusing on mob violence.
It was published to ascertain the causes of mob justice and provide recommendations to specialist government officials to put a stop to extrajudicial violence.
Rights group Adhoc spokesman Soeung Sen Karuna said to stop mob violence, the government had to stamp out corruption in the court system.
In particular, he said, the wealthy and powerful must face prosecution when they commit offences, and such cases should be more widely publicised so people can see the proof for themselves.
“So we should produce short video clips of all offences as we saw recently when the UN produced some on social media. Everyone should take part,” Sen Karuna said.
Cambodia Human Rights Committee spokesperson Chin Malin acknowledged that extrajudicial violence was a sensitive issue in Cambodia, but that the government had done a great deal to tackle the problem by educating the people and strengthening the capacity of law enforcement officials.
“Past occurrences may have been because of a lack of comprehensive media coverage and law enforcement at the time,” he said.
Malin said the issues raised in the OHCHR report did not fully explain the causes that led to mob justice, neither did they offer workable mechanisms to deal with the issue or identify the stakeholders who should be involved in its resolution.
The government alone could not be held accountable, he said, and there had to be participation from civil society organisations and opposition politicians.
Malin said opposition parties had used politics to fuel hatred and discrimination against Vietnamese and Chinese nationals, causing unrest and rebellion including extrajudicial violence.
He said a mob beating had left University of Cambodia English professor Suy Sareth seriously injured early last year, and the incident was influenced by the politicising of class hate and racial prejudice.
“For a clear example, look at Sareth’s case. When a road accident occurred, people shouted that he was a Chinese or Vietnamese national because he had a fair complexion. So it’s a case of politics fuelling people’s anger to commit violence,” Malin said.
However, he stressed that since the Sareth incident, there had not been any instances of mob violence and that the authorities had strictly enforced the law by sending three people to prison and were looking for four others who remain at large.
