Cambodian government urged to act on rape cases

Robert Carmichael, Phnom Penh
Australia Network News
9/03/2010

The human rights group Amnesty International is calling for the Cambodian government to act against an apparent rise in rape cases.

A new report says the Cambodian government has failed to meet its international obligations to protect women and children from a rising incidence of rape.

The group says while accurate data on rape is impossible to find, police and NGO workers across Cambodia are reporting higher numbers of the crime, and believe it is getting worse

Amnesty's country specialist, Brittis Edman, has told Radio Australia's Connect Asia program widespread corruption in the police, judiciary and medical systems, combined with a lack of accessible services, means victims of rape are failing to get justice.

"We found that the situation that they meet is really very, very difficult, and much of their experience after the rape is an extension of the initial abuse," she said.

"Court officials typically ask for bribes at all levels of the process. Medical services are few and far between."

Amnesty's report was based on interviews with 30 victims of rape, around half of whom were under 18.

Ms Edman says the high prevalence of child victims, mainly girls, stems from the fact that so many of those at the NGOs set up to help rape victims are children.

One such NGO, Banteay Srei, says 80 percent of the 71 rape victims their safe house helped last year were girls of 12 or 13 years old.

Since Banteay Srei started just five years ago, the number of rape victims has risen from 5 to 71, and team leader Sun Maly says there are a number of reasons behind the increase.

"The increase is firstly due to poverty - parents leaving their children alone when they leave to seek work," she said.

"The second is the fact that people know our service is available. And the third is because of social perceptions of the problem."

Amnesty says the government must recruit and train more female police officers, and ensure that courtrooms are more victim-friendly.

But Ms Edman says Amnesty is also strongly criticising practices in which the perpetrator pays the victim a cash sum in exchange for the charges being dropped, or in which the perpetrator marries the victim in order to escape court.

"The most important recommendation is that we ask the government to speak out and condemn publicly and repeatedly rape," she said.

"This to show that it's not tolerated, and they have to do it because of the lack of social sanction."