For Cambodians, fear is a way of life

By LAO MONG HAY
January 23, 2008

HONG KONG, China, Last December, in a speech at a rally in Phnom Penh to mark International Human Rights Day, Prof. Yash Ghai, the U.N. secretary-general's special envoy for human rights in Cambodia, said, among other things, that "fear -- fear of the state, fear of political and economic saboteurs, fear of greedy individuals and corporations, fear of the police and the courts -- describes the plight of numerous communities and families in Cambodia as they do in many other parts of the world."

Fear on the part of ordinary people in relation to their rulers at all levels of public administration, from village chiefs to the head of state, is a norm in Cambodia, where these rulers behave as masters, not servants, of their people. The concept of "public administration as service and citizens as clients" is absent in the political and administrative culture of the country, where these rulers still consider public services not the rights of their people, but favors they are doing them.

People invariably need to oil the palms of administrators to get things done, be they the registration of births, marriages or deaths; medical treatment at public hospitals; applications for licenses; adjudication of conflicts; or even the payment of taxes to the government. When they are in trouble with the law and get caught, they have an ingrained fear of being tortured by the police. They or their relatives need to offer bribes to them for better treatment.

Nor can people expect the courts to do their constitutional duty to protect the rights of citizens.

Accused persons or litigants in civil cases cannot expect a fair trial or the enforcement of their rights when they engage in a legal conflict with the powerful or the rich.

The same special envoy also remarked in his speech about the attitude of the Parliament toward the plight of victims of land-grabbing, comments that are typical of the relationship between the rulers and the ruled across the country: "People threatened with eviction … reminded me that the National Assembly sits only a few meters away from them and yet has long turned a blind eye to their suffering."

Although they have exercised their right to vote and regularly elect their rulers, people do not have confidence and trust in the system and institutions of the country. Aggrieved Cambodians invariably have recourse first to nongovernmental organizations, especially human rights and legal aid NGOs, to seek assistance in getting the public authorities to adjudicate and enforce their rights. They also have recourse to the media to help publicize their cases and convey their requests to their rulers to enforce their rights and find justice for them.

In a report published last October, Ath Bonny, field editor of Radio Free Asia, said: "Nowadays the people don't complain to the government or police: they complain to RFA. Many people see us as a direct channel to communicate with their national leaders, and I think that makes the government nervous."

Such assistance and publicity have made the public authorities angry with NGOs and the media.

For instance, in his Jan. 14 report to higher authorities, a commune chief in Siem Reap Province blamed human rights NGOs and RFA for "instigating" a protest by a group of 50 villages to get fair compensation for the damage to their properties due to the construction of a road.

With advice from NGOs or on their own, aggrieved people band together and stage protests against evictions from their homes and lands, the arrests of their fellow villagers or representatives or other violations of their rights, all of which are serious issues affecting many people in the country. They stage such protests locally or in the capital in front of the residence of the prime minister and the Parliament, bracing themselves against the consequences of bans on all public demonstrations and protests.

On Jan. 15, for instance, 40 villagers from two provinces went to stage a protest in front of the Parliament against the grabbing of their lands. Earlier, in November 2007, a group of 30 peasants with sickles in their hands went to the court in Battambang to support their representative who had been summoned to appear and to put pressure on the court not to arrest her in a land dispute case, for they knew that arrest is a common practice used to break the spirit of the weaker party that has a stronger case.

There is an urgent need to allay the fear that is so prevalent in Cambodia and to win public confidence and trust in the government and all public institutions of the country that are now so lacking. This aim could be achieved by the realization of the concept of "public administration as service, citizens as clients" through observance of, and respect for, the rights of the people and the diligent enforcement of these rights.

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(Lao Mong Hay is currently a senior researcher at the Asian Human Rights Commission in Hong Kong. He was previously director of the Khmer Institute of Democracy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and a visiting professor at the University of Toronto in 2003. In 1997, he received an award from Human Rights Watch and the Nansen Medal in 2000 from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.)