JURIST - Hotline: Due process urgently needed for Cambodian criminal suspects

Theary Seng [Executive Director, The Center for Social Development]: "A criminal proceeding in any environment - be it in a developed state or here in developing Cambodia - is a serious matter because an individual's liberty and rights are at stake. Before any rights or freedom of a person is to be limited by the State (e.g. imprisonment), extreme due care must be taken to ascertain that the curbing of these rights/liberties are justified and followed established due process.

The adherence of due process is more urgently needed here in Cambodia where the legal and penal system is embryonic and fragile, prone to abuses, without adequate balance of powers among the different parties in the criminal case and generally among the three branches of government.

Moreover, greater scrutiny of these criminal proceedings must be had in light of our dark, recent history of gross violations of human rights on a massive scale.

We, at CSD, are abhorred by the high rate of torture and coercion used to extract confessions – 1 in 4 as you accurately noted from our Annual Report. A confession given as a result of coercion and torture cannot be deemed reliable or accurate. Consequently, it means that one in four defendants run the high, unacceptable risk of being wrongly convicted – i.e., having their rights curbed and violated – as a result not of having committed a crime but of fear for life resulting from coercion and torture. This 25% rate of confession due to coercion and torture also put into question all convictions, whether they are safe. We are deeply concerned that they are not safe and that many innocent people are being put in prison or having their rights and liberties curbed in other manners without proper due process of law."