Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at 09:13 EST
PHNOM PENH — Visitors to prisons in Cambodia are required to pay bribes to prison guards to gain access to inmates, a Cambodian human rights organization said in a report released Tuesday. The report by LICADHO said, "In order for families to visit a family member in prison, they are usually required to pay a bribe to the prison guards."
It said that the bribe can range from 2,000 riel (about $0.50) to hundreds of dollars depending on the particular prison guard and the perception of wealth of the family. "Families and visitors are regularly denied access to their loved ones if they are unable to pay these bribes," the report said.
Often, even if the bribe has been paid, the visit will be heavily monitored by prison guards to make the prisoners fearful of telling their families about the true conditions in the prison, it added.
Source: Japan Today, retrieved on 12 March.
In fact, there should be no surprise because this is Cambodia, where bribery is very COMMON and everywhere. A good example can be easily found in any public primary school. I'm sure that I don't have to describe how it happens there. The main causes are said to be low salaries and the absence of anti-corruption law (or no enforcement of the existing law???). Then, who is to blame? Could or should we find someone to blame? ...Could I do something??? I wish I could...
5 comments:
Hmmm... would be a big topic to discuss. I wrote a very short report on how to tackle corruption in teaching for a class i took last semester. It's more of an opinion based writing. Tell me if you want to read it.
And you dont wanna miss these:
1- World Bank Cambodia award winning essay on What can young people help government be more accountable and effective? (PDF file).
2- Essay on the same topic above by a blogger.
3- And most importantly, this final report in PDF from the International Essay Competition 2007 on topic of "How does corruption affect your life? What can you do to fight corruption that you face?"!
My understanding for the Cambodian case is that corruption has already been developed into a culture because it becomes a habit and many people know how to deal with it whenever they meet. Here is not an easy question that we have to eliminate one culture, and I am not sure if law can be introduced to eliminate a culture. What embeded in this culture are values accepted by those corrupted. So to eliminate this culture, i think it is necessary to change the presently accepted values. People must learn to value justice, fairness, equity, liberty, and the like. We can this culture by changing the value they take. Changing from the value of money to the value of fairness is an immediate one. For this reason, we have to understand why people value the money too much in Cambodia. Only when we understand these grass roots that we can cure this chronical disease. Law enforcement is just an ex-post measure, and we need also an ex-ante measure too to prevent from happening again and again.
love this positive idea!!! and it should start from me. hhahahaa Ricky
Phy, thanks for giving the sources. Reading them.
Anonymous, you are right about habit-like corruption in Cambodia. But, I still can't imagine how we cure this disease by knowing why people value money more than fairness. Can you give an example of ex-ante measure?
Ricky, why start from you? Do you mean starting from public servants?
Why people value money more than fairness? One of the reasons might be that these people have not been given an education of where fairness and justice should be promoted. It may stem from poor education, and in this case we have to promote fairness and justice in the education system. These people might have very little sense of community or sense of nationalism, and they only think that as long as they have money they can do every thing regardless of how other people suffered.
Ex-ante measure might include transparent procedures for allowing the visit. Or we can instal camera where communication between visitors and prison guards is recorded. This will reduce the chance or oppornity to take bribes from visitors. Another ex-ante measure might also include an expectation that if he bribes, the community including his friends and his family will not tolerate his action. This will help preventing his action.
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