# 170 “Corruption is everywhere,” says Naly Pilorge, Director of LICADHO

Dear Samleang Seila

It would seem that at least one of the men who visited me in my hotel last week was an out-of-uniform policeman. The manager of my hotel recognized him.  

Why out-of-uniform policeman should be running errands for you raises certain questions.

If the second man was not a policeman, this raises further questions. Who was he?

These two men have not returned to my hotel in the past 7 days to give me the document they had in their hands.

It is possible, I suppose, that you did not send these two men to my hotel; that they were sent by someone else. If so, whatever their mission was, it seems not to have succeeded.

If, on the other hand, these two men really were sent by yourself, please feel free to email to me whatever document it is that they wished to give to me. I am now in Australia and unable to be handed it in person.

A few days ago Naly Pilorge had the following to say in a press release regarding a LICADHO report entitled “Courts Still Failing Rape Victims”:

The report is based on 762 cases of rape and attempted rape submitted to the rights group’s office in Phnom Penh as well as its offices in 12 provinces between 2012 and 2014.  

The 24-page report identifies corruption as one of the factors behind the failure of the judicial system to investigate and prosecute men suspected of raping women and children.

“Every time the victim comes into contact with a public official, it’s likely that they will have to make a corrupt payment and if the suspect has money he will probably be able to buy his freedom,” Licadho director Naly Pilorge said in a press release accompanying the release of the report. “Sometimes it seems like the authorities don’t care about justice. Instead, rape cases are just a way for them to make money.

“Corruption is everywhere,” she said.

Only a blind person could fail to acknowledge that in Cambodia “Corruption is everywhere.” In the case of Mr Fletcher, corruption manifests itself first and foremost in his being denied a fair trial in 2011. Corruption also manifests itself in Yang Dany and her mother, Sekun, being told that they stood to gain $30,000 in compensation if Mr Fletcher was found guilty of rape. This is to be found in court documents, as you know.

The $30,000 offer to Yang Dany and her mother was not only corrupt in that it played a significant role in Mr Fletcher’s being found guilty of rape. It was also corrupt in that it led an impoverished scavenger (Sekun) to believe that she could earn the equivalent of 30 years wages by simply convincing her daughter to affix her thumb print to a document accusing Mr Fletcher of rape. This abuse of Yang Dany’s human and legal rights was exacerbated when she and her mother found out, the hard way, that there would be no $30,000 but that they might get $5,000 in compensation. By then the wheels of ‘justice’ had begun to turn and there was no turning back for Yang Dany and her mother. They could not tell the truth because they could then be charged, themselves, with perjury. They had to stick with their story, no doubt reassured that in a secret trial, no-one was going to care about the actual evidence – the most important of which, as you had known since Sept 2010, was that Yang Dany survived her two hour long ‘brutal’ rapes with her hymen intact.

This would not have passed the pub laugh test in court had there been members of the public and media present. Hence the need for a trial held ‘in camera’.

Sekun is quite bitter that having played the role assigned to her and Yang Dany they have not received one cent the $5,000 they were told they would get. Nor did they receive the financial assistance that Scott Neeson said he would provide (to Andrew Drummond). With my camera running, I asked Sekun if she would be prepared to tell the truth in court in late 2014. Her reply was, “If you give me $5,000.”

Sekun will tell whatever version of ‘the truth’ is going to result in her receiving $5,000. However, Sekun is a most unguarded woman and it is not hard to get her to tell the truth. A skilled lawyer, cross-examining her in court, would have little trouble in shooting holes in whatever story Sekun chose to tell (depending on who had given her $5,000) and getting her to admit the truth.

And it is the truth, Seila, that you so desperately do not want to emerge in court. After more than 5 years of hard work on your part to portray Mr Fletcher as a man who has been found guilty in a properly constituted court, an innocent verdict would be a severe blow to APLE’s credibility. And to the credibility of all those (SISHA, CEOP, Scott Neeson and the FCO) who pursued Mr Fletcher on rape charges whilst knowing, since Sept 2010, that the alleged victim remained a virgin.

Now it is quite apparent that the medical evidence does not support the allegation that Mr Fletcher raped Yang Dany, your fallback position is that he is not entitled to a ‘re-trial’ (a misnomer, since he has had no trial at all) because he submitted certain documents to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court late. To put this another way, in the moral world you inhabit, a man deserves to spend 10 years in jail without a trial, regardless of his guilt or innocence, because he did not submit documents in time.

This is not the moral universe that a man should be living in whose job it is to protect the human rights not just of alleged victims of sex crimes but alleged perpetrators. It is morally reprehensible and you are not fit to occupy the position you do and should resign if you have any principles at all. And you should be asked to resign if APLE is to retain any credibility at all.

On the other hand, if you wish to remain in your job and cling to whatever sliver of credibility you and APLE retain, you could immediately write to the Minister for Justice and advocate Mr Fletcher’s right to a fair trial. If, despite your belief that he did not rape Yang Dany, you believe he deserves to spend 10 years in jail for the heinous crime of submitting documents late to the court, come into court and argue your case.