Sothon was 10 years old when he first saw the inside of a Cambodian prison. A street-kid in the booming tourist town of Siem Reap, he had stolen a small roll of electric wire that he hoped to sell for enough money to buy a few bowls of rice.
It cost him a month behind bars. "I missed my parents. They did not allow me to meet my mother," Sothon, now 11, told a news conference on Wednesday to highlight the plight of the hundreds of children locked up, often for spurious reasons, in the war-scarred south-east Asian nation.
"I had no blanket, no pillow and not enough food to eat," he told reporters from behind a screen to protect his identity. "Every morning, they forced me to carry water." Human rights groups and UNICEF, the United Nations childrens agency, say there are 497 documented cases of children under 18 in provincial jails in Cambodia.
Many of them were abused, said Kek Galabru, director of human rights group Licadho, and as many as 40 percent had never been tried for their alleged crimes. Those that had appeared in court were often forced to make false confessions and seldom gained a fair hearing in a notoriously corrupt and arbitrary judicial system. Sentencing of chidren was also "extremely harsh", UNICEF said.
One boy, Heng, was jailed in 2005 as a 12-year-old for raping a 9-year-old girl, although Licadho said the allegations were baseless. Heng's case is now under appeal.
"Children should not be in prison," said UNICEF legal consultant Sandy Feinzig. "It is a very serious issue." The situation, which is compounded by massive prison overcrowding in what is one of Asia's poorest countries, is likely to get worse, she added, due to high poverty and unemployment rates in the 13 million population, half of which is under 18.
Donor countries, which give Phnom Penh around $600 million in aid each year, should push for better legal representation for minors and adequate food and medical facilities for those in detention, she said.
"We have to have more lawyers and we need better facilities. We need better-trained judges and prosecutors to keep children who've committed misdemeanours out of prison." Government spokesman Khieu Sopheak denied the accusations.
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