18 March 2014

J. Salomé

After a two hour drive from Ratanakiri we arrive in Stung Treng, a small provincial city in the North East of Cambodia close to the Lao border. We go off the main road and follow a path going under a bridge, a red-track shadowed by trees with small village houses on each side. We stop the car in front of a fence, go beneath it and walk in a property. At the end of the garden, on the left side, there is a traditional wooden house on stilts. Next to it, a small, simple concrete house is standing with a pediment reading that the house was donated to the family to support them.

A young man is waiting for us in front of the small ladder leading to the wooden platform of the house. His name is Ly[1], and he was defended by the IBJ lawyer a few months ago. We settle on a mat on the platform to listen to his story while a very old woman comes towards us, looks at us attentively, and sits down next to us. Ly explains that she is his grandmother and that she does not speak Khmer, but Lao. He seemed quite impressed to meet again his lawyer, the person who got him out of jail a few months ago. But one could also see a hint of sadness in his eyes, as a now permanent mark of his experience in detention.

On 11th September 2013, Ly was sitting in a café when one of his acquaintances walked up to him and gave him two sets of clothes before rushing out of the place. A little confused, Ly went back home and pursued his daily routine. However, two weeks later, the police came to his home to accuse him of having stolen these clothes. They took him to the police station, where he stayed a few days before being transferred to the prison in Stung Treng in pretrial detention. The friend who had given him the clothes was arrested as well.

Ly had spent a total of 3 months and 23 days in pretrial detention. He was 17 years old at that time. His case was referred to Mao Sary, the IBJ lawyer working in Ratanakiri and Stung Treng provinces, by ADHOC, the human rights NGO. Ly and Sary met the day of the trial, on 23 January 2014. Ly knew from his father that a lawyer could defend and protect him. In his plea, Sary carefully analyzed the facts and highlighted that his client had only witnessed the whole situation. His friend, the actual perpetrator, was trying to get rid of the evidence. He underlined in his defense strategy that the police were not present at the crime scene and that his client was not in possession of the object of the offense. He also stressed that Ly had been consistent in all his statements, denying the charges all the way throughout the procedure. Over the course of the trial, Sary realized that the prosecutor was still reluctant to listen to the defendant’s version of the facts. The prosecutor claimed that Ly was an accomplice to the theft. So Sary decided to interrogate the victim whose statement matched the version of the facts alleged by Ly in order to make a powerful argument in favor of his client. Despite the prosecutor’s unwillingness to drop the charges against Ly, the judge decided to acquit and release him the same day.

When Ly was awaiting his trial in Stung Treng prison, he was struck by the unjust character of what was happening to him. As a juvenile, he was kept separate from the adults. The prison conditions were not easy: he had only two meals a day and drinking water was scarce. He became stressed and could not sleep well in jail. As he was evoking and reviving these painful memories with us, his look became more evasive and tainted with sadness. He told us that he had missed his family a lot and written many letters to them while he was in prison.