THE Cambodian government should quash the convictions of 25 human rights activists, factory workers, and others for lack of evidence, Human Rights Watch has said.
On May 30, 2014, the Phnom Penh municipal court convicted the defendants in three cases of committing violence during recent demonstrations and imposed suspended sentences of up to four-and-a-half years.
While none received prison time, their convictions incur penalties such as a prohibition on serving as union leaders. Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said: ‘The release of 25 people jailed for political reasons is welcome, but their convictions should be quashed along with their criminal records.
‘These politically motivated convictions should not be allowed to stand and provide a false legal pretext for restricting their basic rights.’ The rights group said that Cambodia’s donors should publicly denounce the convictions and call for the defendants to be exonerated. Donors should together demand an end to the ruling Cambodian People’s Party control of the police and courts.
The authorities had charged the accused with instigating, inciting, or directly committing violent acts resulting in injuries to security forces and damage to property during strikes, demonstrations, and riots in Phnom Penh in November 2013 and January 2014.
However, the trials appeared to be part of a systematic effort by the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen to cover up the security forces’ use of excessive force that resulted in the deaths of seven people and injuries to many more.
The government used the courts to unfairly convict activists and people randomly apprehended during the unrest, falsely blaming them for all violence – while taking no legal action against any member of the security forces for the illegal use of force.
The three trials involved: a young man and a boy arrested after police blocked a march by striking workers in Phnom Penh’s Steung Meanchey neighbourhood on November 12, 2013; ten people, including four labour and land activists, arrested by Brigade 911 during its suppression of worker protests at the Yakjin garment factory on January 2, 2014; and 13 workers and others arrested by police and gendarmes deployed to break up demonstrations on industrial Veng Sreng Street on January 2 and 3.
In the Steung Meanchey trial, a young man charged with committing aggravated intentional violence and damage on November 12, 2013, was wrongly identified by the police as being responsible for violence.
The other defendant, a child with an intellectual disability who admitted throwing some stones, should not have been sentenced to prison. In the Yakjin case, while protesters and security forces threw stones at each other near the factory, there was no investigation into whether Brigade 911 troops, armed with assault rifles, steel bars, truncheons, knives, and slingshots, instigated the violence.
All ten accused were originally charged with aggravated violence and damage, but the charge against the four activists was later changed to inciting the worker disorder.
In the Veng Sreng case, while some workers had thrown missiles at police, no evidence was presented at the trial about whether any of the 13 defendants had participated in the violence and other crimes with which they were charged. The accused asserted that they were simply present as bystanders or local residents.
The judges in all three cases demonstrated clear bias and failed to meet their obligations under international fair trial standards set out in Cambodia’s criminal procedural code (article 325) to impartially evaluate both inculpatory and exculpatory evidence.
Judges abandoned the neutral language of the indictments, which described the accused as ‘demonstrators’, ‘protesters’, or ‘workers’, instead repeating the prosecution’s constant characterization of them as ‘anarchists’ intent on creating political and social disorder.
The judges’ demeanor towards the accused and their defence lawyers was also frequently hostile and disrespectful, in contrast to their polite and even deferential attitude toward the prosecution and security force officers.
Evidence presented in the Yakjin and Veng Sreng cases pointed to arbitrary arrests, rather than the detention of specific individuals whom security forces positively identified at the time or later as committing criminal acts.
Other recent Cambodian court convictions were of people apparently arrested simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Prominent social and political figure Vorn Peou and three other activists arrested at the Yakjin factory on January 2 appear to have been targeted due to their non-violent political or social activities.
According to members of the security forces sources who spoke to Human Rights Watch in confidence, Vorn Peou is on a blacklist of social activists, journalists, and human rights defenders the security forces have been compiling as possible targets for prosecution and imprisonment since the second half of 2013.
These sources told Human Rights Watch that police and gendarmes are under instructions to build criminal cases against these people, even if they have committed no criminal offense. In both trials the judges abused archaic provisions within Cambodia’s legal system according to which evidence does not need to be introduced in hearings in order to be considered in a judgment.
As a result, many members of the security forces, who had made key statements to the police and investigating judges prior to the hearings as civil parties or victims alleging they suffered harm from violence instigated or perpetrated by the accused, were not present at trial.
Over defence objections that this did not allow their allegations to be challenged, the trial judges allowed their statements simply to be read out by the court clerk. The verdicts in these trials came a week after the Cambodian government pushed through the National Assembly new laws on the organisation of the courts and its oversight body, the Supreme Council of Magistracy.
The laws provide the government formal control over the courts, in violation of international law and contrary to Cambodia’s constitution, which calls for separation of powers and an independent judiciary.
• More than a dozen garment factory union leaders in Gazipur, Bangladesh, have been physically attacked or threatened with violence and even death in the past two weeks, according to the Bangladesh Independent Garment Workers Union Federation (BIGUF).
The attacks are centered on garment workers seeking to form unions at factories owned by East West Industrial Park, which operates eleven factories in a large manufacturing complex outside Dhaka, the capital.
More than fifteen garment union leaders, fearing for their safety, have left their homes and cannot return to work. BIGUF leaders say they have met with East West managers, who indicated they would provide for a police presence outside the factory gates where many of the attacks have occurred, but so far, have not.
Garment workers at five East West factories began forming unions in March and sought to register their unions with the government. The government has rejected all the applications, based on flimsy reasons such as the absence of a workers’ mother’s name, BIGUF leaders say.
Last year, following the April 2013 collapse of Rana Plaza, which killed more than 1,110 garment workers, the Bangladesh government began registering new unions, with more than 130 gaining legal recognition in the last year. But union leaders fear the recent rejections signal a change in course.
After the garment workers filed for registration for their unions, which are affiliated with BIGUF, East West management attempted to form company unions. Each factory-level union sent a letter expressing concerns about management’s actions to the Bangladesh labour director, and BIGUF tried to file an official complaint with police, who refused to accept the report.
Despite garment workers’ success in establishing their own unions in the past year, workers and union organisers also have been harassed, threatened and some physically attacked when trying to exercise their rights to be paid what they are owed and to work in safer workplaces.
But the scale of attacks on workers at East West is alarming, union leaders say. BIGUF has documented the attacks, some of which include:
• May 11: An executive committee member of European Pantaloon Fashion Limited Workers’ Union was abducted outside the factory by approximately a dozen men, who warned him against continuing his trade union activities.
• May 12: Two executive committee members of Pantaloon Fashion Limited Workers’ Union were abducted outside the factory at gunpoint, beaten and robbed. Workers identified the men as associated with the factory.
• May 20: Two supervisors from East West Fashion Garments Limited appeared at the union general secretary’s home and abducted him, taking him to an East West contractor’s office, where he was told that he would be killed if he continued his union activism.
• May 24: A union executive committee member of European Pantaloon Fashion Limited Workers’ Union was beaten outside his home by a group of unidentified men.
BIGUF is demanding an immediate end to violence and intimidation of workers and organisers at factories in the East West complex. BIGUF also is calling on management to hold the perpetrators of violence accountable; ensure the safety of union leaders, members and organisers, as well as their family members; guarantee the safety of union leaders so they can return to work; and recognise and negotiate with the unions at its factories.
