Prison oversight lags: UN
Five years after first ratifying the UN Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT), Cambodia remains delinquent in honouring some of its commitments under the treaty, UN representatives said yesterday. Under the OPCAT, Cambodia was obliged to create an independent National Preventive Mechanism (NPM) to monitor and curb torture in places of detention – such as prisons, police stations and drug detention centres – within a year of its ratification of the protocol. However, some four years after the first round of spot-checks of Cambodia’s detention centres by the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT), and two years after a 2011 admonishment from the UN, Cambodia has failed to do so, relying instead on a government panel composed of the very ministries it’s meant to monitor, SPT chairman Malcolm Evans said. … Despite the fact that Cambodia’s current inter-ministerial panel is composed in part by the ministries of justice and interior, General Department of Prisons director Kuy Bunsorn yesterday expressed outright opposition to the creation of a new NPM, saying that reviews by the Interior Ministry and National Police had already vouched for the independence of the current body. …
Stuart White
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/prison-oversight-lags-un
