This International Women’s Day, LICADHO is calling for immediate improvements to the conditions faced by women and girls who are detained in Cambodia’s disastrously overcrowded prison system.

Last month, nine women shared stories with LICADHO about life within Correctional Centre 2 (CC2), the country’s only prison designated for women and children. Five of these women - Sokha, Bopha, Sopheary, Sreyleak, and Chanmony - are currently imprisoned or have recently been released. Their names have been changed to protect their identities. Others are family members of imprisoned women human rights defenders Chhoeun Daravy, Eng Malai, Long Kunthea and Phuon Keoraksmey.

All of these women have faced deplorable prison conditions. Yet rights violations behind bars are avoidable, and the government has a responsibility to urgently resolve this crisis by implementing best-practices from both domestic and international laws and regulations.

Contents

▪  Women Activists Silenced
▪  Inhumane Prison Conditions
▪  Pre-Trial Detention and the Presumption of Innocence
▪  Mothers and their Children in Prison
▪  A System in Crisis: COVID-19 and Natural Disasters

Women Activists Silenced

Five environmental activists from Mother Nature were convicted for incitement on Wednesday for planning a peaceful protest.

In the wave of arrests following the detention of union leader Rong Chhun in July 2020, a growing number of women human rights defenders have been jailed in an effort to silence their peaceful activism. Among these are Sar Kanika, Chhoeun Daravy and Eng Malai, who were each arrested after peacefully calling for Chhun’s release. Daravy was dragged into a van by her hair during her arrest, which she recently shaved off to highlight the injustice of her continued imprisonment.

In early September, women environmental activists Long Kunthea and Phuon Keoraksmey, together with activist Thun Ratha, were also put behind bars for planning a one-woman march over concerns about the selling-off of Boeung Tamok lake in the capital’s north. Each woman has been charged with incitement and faces up to two years in prison if found guilty. These women are still in prison, enduring abysmal conditions alongside thousands of other women and girls.

We call on the government to release all prisoners held without a sufficient legal basis, including those arbitrarily detained for peaceful activism or on politically motivated grounds.

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Inhumane Prison Conditions

Before her release earlier this year, Sokha spent three and a half years locked in CC2. She was arrested while trying to buy crystal methamphetamine for personal use – just enough, she said, to last her a week.

“I shared a cell with 176 women, and there was one bathroom with two toilets,” said Sokha, who estimated that the cell was about 30 meters long and barely seven meters wide. “It was never enough,” she said.

As of late last year, all but one of the 18 prisons monitored by LICADHO exceeded 100% capacity. CC2 was at nearly 400% capacity. This severe overcrowding – which has grown rapidly worse with the government’s drug crackdown – has resulted in unsafe, unsanitary and inhumane conditions. These conditions fall far short of the United Nations standards for the treatment of prisoners, known as the Nelson Mandela Rules, as well as the specific rules for the treatment for women prisoners, known as the Bangkok Rules.

Women inside must pay for everything, including nutritious food, sufficient clean water, adequate healthcare, electricity, family visits, time outside the cell and space to sleep on cell floors. Those who can’t afford to pay often go without. Limited access to clean water and soap can have a disproportionate impact on women who are pregnant, breastfeeding or menstruating, and period products are not provided by prisons – in direct contravention of the Bangkok Rules.

Left deep in debt after the death of her husband, Sopheary started selling drugs to repay the family’s loans. The five years she spent in prison as a result, she said, was the hardest time of her life.
“One organisation provided three packets of pads every four months, but I would often need to use three packets in one month,” she explained. “The prison didn’t provide anything. Women would share what they had with each other, but it was so bad when there wasn’t enough.”

It’s not only adult women who suffer in Cambodia’s prisons. Child prisoners, including girls, are often incarcerated or have contact with adult prisoners. Women and girls also have limited access to education or vocational training, in further contravention of international standards.

We call on the government to fully implement the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules) and the United Nations Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-custodial Measures for Women Offenders (Bangkok Rules).

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Pre-Trial Detention and the Presumption of Innocence

“Living in prison is difficult, but I don’t know what to do,” explained Chanmony, who is pregnant. “I don’t have a trial date.”

As of early this year, almost a third of women and girls locked in the prisons monitored by LICADHO were in pre-trial detention. Among them is Chanmony, who hasn’t been found guilty of any crime to justify her imprisonment. An additional 41% are awaiting a final judgement, with their cases under appeal.

Every Cambodian is guaranteed the presumption of innocence under the Constitution. While people accused of a crime can remain at liberty, in practice, many are put in pre-trial detention without proper justification. Many have never met a lawyer, have never been able to apply for bail, and do not understand the charges against them.

The deplorable overuse of pre-trial detention has continued despite a year-long campaign announced by Justice Minister Koeut Rith in May 2020. The campaign intended to address the backlog of cases in the legal system and reduce prison overcrowding. But figures released by the Interior Ministry’s anti-drug department suggest that arrest rates for drug offences continued to grow throughout 2020. The ministry noted in a February 2021 note to two UN special rapporteurs that “the nationwide incarceration rate has been stable”. This incarceration rate could be decreased, and prison overcrowding relieved, if the constitutionally mandated presumption of innocence and bail procedures were properly implemented.

We call on the government to only use pre-trial detention as a last resort, in accordance with the presumption of innocence and with proper consideration of at-risk populations, such as pregnant women, mothers with young children and child prisoners.

We call on the government to ensure every prisoner is asked if they wish to apply for bail, and to prioritise the bail hearings of at-risk populations, such as pregnant women, mothers with young children and child prisoners.

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Mothers and their Children in Prison

Children who are younger than three years old are legally permitted to stay in prison with their mothers. In January 2020, a five-month old baby who had been living in CC2 with her mother died in hospital. Her mother had been in pre-trial detention for allegedly possessing just 10,000 riel, or $2.50, worth of methamphetamine. While it is apparent that there was negligence on the parts of prison officials as well as medical personnel, no meaningful independent or impartial investigation has been conducted into the death of this baby girl.

Despite this tragedy, conditions are still dire for women incarcerated with young children and expecting mothers. Bopha was pregnant for the duration of her prison sentence. “I slept near the bathroom on a mat,” she said. “It was difficult, it hurt my belly and body.”

Pregnant women are regularly denied extra food portions and vitamins essential to nurturing a healthy pregnancy. “We rely on our family for contributions”, explained Bopha. “My mother never visited me because she never had money. I only ate food provided by the prison. It wasn’t good quality”.

Pregnant women are not routinely provided with pre- and post-natal care. In some cases, women are returned to sleep on a cell floor with their newborn the day after giving birth. The government only provides prisons an additional $0.43 per child per day to the prison’s budget. As a result, mothers are not provided with the additional food necessary for breastfeeding or powdered milk and sterile bottles. Once children begin eating solid food, they are further essentially starved of vital nutrients. In most prisons, there are limited spaces for children to play and toys are not provided.

More and more children are spending their early years locked behind bars. In the prisons monitored by LICADHO, the number of children living with their mothers jumped from 30 in 2015 to 106 in early 2021.

We call on the government to provide mothers, pregnant women and child prisoners who are convicted of misdemeanours with suspended sentences.

We call on the government to publish guidelines on how judicial authorities should handle cases involving children, mothers and pregnant women to ensure that they are not incarcerated at such high rates in future.

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A System in Crisis: COVID-19 and Natural Disasters

“I am worried and scared about COVID-19,” said Chanmony. “Sometimes there is enough water, but sometimes there isn’t.”

The government’s insufficient response to COVID-19 in prisons has lacked transparency. A number of prison officials tested positive for COVID-19 in late 2020, yet to date the government has reported testing fewer than 100 prisoners.

Access to adequate medical care, water, soap, ventilation, hand sanitizer and masks are limited, temperature checks are inconsistent, and social distancing is impossible in severely overcrowded cells. Many people with symptoms of COVID-19 appear to only receive basic medical care, such as paracetamol.

“An organisation provided masks and hand sanitizer, but it wasn’t enough,” said Sopheary. “Later a lot of people needed to buy masks or get hand sanitizer from their families.”

Sreyleak, who also spent five years in prison, reported that prison guards verbally abused prisoners seeking medical attention. “Before I could go to the prison health post, the guard insulted me with bad words,” she said. “They look down on us like we’re garbage.”

Family visits and NGO access to prisons were also halted during three periods within the last year, with family visits stopped for up to four months at a time in some cases. “It was difficult when ... we couldn’t meet or call our families, or get things from them,” said Sopheary. “It really affected me, I had no information about my family.”

During the floods of October 2020, several prisons were forced to evacuate prisoners, transferring them to already overcrowded alternative prisons.

“The flood came inside the cell at around 3 or 4am. No one told us about it before it arrived,” Sokha said. “We stood in a line in the water for four or five hours waiting for a truck. It was up to my waist and I was itchy. Eventually we walked through the flood to the other prison. Some people injured their feet because they couldn’t see through the water.”

Women were able to bring limited, if any, belongings for the roughly two-week stay. Some women slept without clothing and developed skin infections due to challenges washing and drying clothes. “It was more difficult, all the women were in one cell,” explained Sokha. “There were 400 or 500 people. It was very crowded.”

Cambodia’s overcrowded prisons are already pushed to the brink, and further shocks – such as natural disasters or the COVID-19 pandemic – threaten the lives and well-being of all prisoners.

We call on the government to follow WHO guidance on “Preparedness, prevention and control of COVID-19 in prisons and other places of detention” and implement effective hygiene and physical distancing measures in all prisons.

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