🇬🇧 The Road to Law an independent voice in Cambodia

Article from Danish Institute for Human Right’s website on the radio programme that I started with Women’s Media Centre of Cambodia and help run for seven years

The air is hot and humid in Kompong Thom prison in Central Cambodia. The old walls are peeling. The prison was built by the French colonial power in 1900. Only one wing has been restored, thanks to aid from Australia. The prison is noted jokingly all over the country as the one with the ‘holes in the walls’ – the one from which escape is easy. A broad, rectangular hole (it is really only a slot) was built into the wall; this is where prisoners receive visitors, out in the open and under constant surveillance by the guards. Fruit and rice are passed through the slot from the street outside to the prisoners inside the wall. The prisoners bend their heads in order to see their visitors. A sudden rainfall scatters everyone; this particular visit is over, as everyone runs for cover from the heavy rain.

This Friday in May, Ms. Chap Chandina is visiting the prison and interviewing prisoners for her weekly radio programme on rule of law in Cambodia, called ‘The Road to Law’. Chap Chandina is known to her listeners throughout the country as well as to friends, family and colleagues as Ms Dina.

One prisoner, a woman, thirty-five years old and mother of three children, tells Ms Dina of her plight; the interview will constitute part of a programme that focuses on pre-trial detention, to be broadcast in a few weeks. ‘My husband drinks, and he had two lovers – one of them a prostitute,’ says the woman. She couldn’t stand the situation and threw acid in her husband’s face. This took place about a month earlier. The children have been surviving by themselves since the acid attack. The husband is just out of hospital, recovered, but hardly the attractive man he used to be. His wife has forgiven him now. ‘I want to go home and care for him and for my children,’ says the woman. But her case has not been tried yet – and she does not know whether her husband will take her back.

She deeply regrets her deed, and when asked if she has a message for the listeners of ‘The Road to Law’’, she says, ‘Don’t do what I did. Nothing good comes of it.’ Had she known more about her rights and Cambodia’s legal system, she might not have been in prison. She might have divorced her husband instead.

While in Kompong Thom, Ms Dina and her reporter colleague, Mr. Koh Tararith, interview other inmates: a convicted robber, and a very poor fisherman who killed his wife in a stupor and now tries to care for their three daughters. Besides the prisoners, the two reporters talk with the General Director of the prison, and a lawyer who works for an NGO, Cambodia’s Defenders’ Project (CDP), and giving legal aid to poor people.
Mr. So Inn, the lawyer who works for the legal aid organization, finds the programme ‘The Road to Law’ enlightening. It gives people without much – or any – education the opportunity to understand their legal rights and duties, it tells them how to file a complaint and deals with all the other complicated issues that have always been reserved for the privileged few with knowledge and power. In his work, So Inn sees how poor and uneducated people who are unaware of their rights very often spend a long time in pre-trial detention – even when accused for lesser crimes that do not warrant pre-trial detention. ‘Being lawyers, we always appeal for release. The law states that only accusation of serious crimes warrants pre-trial detention, but the wealthy always go free, while innocents are accused,’ says So Inn.

At the Central Market in Kompong Thom, quite a few people know Ms. Dina’s programme.

Mr. Eng Yitthy sells pots, shovels, buckets and the like from his market stall. He is an ardent listener of the radio programme ‘The Road to Law’, which is broadcast every Thursday from 10:50 to 11:50 AM. ‘I listen to it every week. It is highly interesting and useful. There are many of us who have little or no understanding of the law. The programme helps us by describing specific problems and telling how to solve them through the legal system. I have tried to call you several times, Ms. Dina, but I haven’t yet managed to get through to you in the studio.’

The radio programme ‘The Road to Law’ uses short stories, ‘sound pictures’ and interviews to illustrate issues – be it the many conflicts about land ownership, civil law, constitutional law, penal law, divorce law, or whichever subject is the focus of a specific programme. The host, Ms. Dina, has one or two guests in the studio: a lawyer, a prosecutor or a judge. Cambodia’s Commissioner for Human Rights has been there, as well as many representatives from human rights organizations that focus on legal issues in Cambodia. After a thorough and enlightening description of the specific issues, the telephone lines are opened so that callers from all over the country can air their problems with the law or the subject in question. 

Eng Yitthy, the pottery seller, says that the short stories told in the programme create a good sense of understanding. They are real life drama, made up of interviews with people who have experienced something relevant in connection with a specific program’s issue – e.g., civil law.

‘The Road to Law’ is one of many informative and educational programmes – most of which are directed towards women and children— broadcast on the popular radio station Women’s Media Centre (WMC).

‘Our radio station focuses on human rights,’ says Mrs. Chea Sundaneth, the co-director who runs WMC Radio, ‘women’s and children’s in particular. We already have a programme focusing on child labor, which has run for three years. “The Road to Law” is directed towards everyone. The purpose is to explain people’s rights to the public, and to make people understand how to protect these rights. We started in January 2003. “The Road to Law” is important, and we have many listeners. It’s a popular programme; and sadly, we are the only radio station that covers these issues.’

‘As they have telephones of their own, most of those calling during the programme are middle class. So it is our duty to reach the poor people, listen to their problems and help them find ways to solve them. Experts are invited to the studio—legal experts, lawyers, victims, people from the NGOs—it depends on the issue.’

Chea Sundaneth notes with some pride that one of her greatest worries with ‘The Road to Law’ was whether the experts would participate and take unedited questions from listeners directly on air. ‘But once we got started, they came: judges and prosecutors. We even had Cambodia’s Commissioner for Human Rights. And even if they do worry a bit before we go on air – they are not used to this kind of direct confrontation—they are always happy afterwards to have taken and been able to answer questions from the public.’

‘We are creating a new kind of radio here in Cambodia. Before, we worried that people thought we were making up our stories; now, we not only point out injustices, we also bring recommendations to people. For example, we explain how to file a case in court: which documents are needed, how someone qualifies as a witness, and the like. And we have responsible people from society making pledges here – right on the air.’

WMC is the only independent radio station in Cambodia that has not at some point been closed down by government. One reason is that it goes to great lengths not to provoke the government. The team behind ‘The Road to Law’ is highly aware of the sensitivity of their subject, and they always make sure not to come up with direct accusations. So do not expect Ms. Dina to come up with harsh criticism of the status quo whilst on the air. However, there is a lot of – often very harsh – criticism of Cambodia’s legal system (or lack thereof) in the programme, but this all comes from the callers. They want to know when a policeman is authorized to use force – be it beatings, shooting or issuing fines. They want to know why powerful people seem to be above the law. They want to know what to do when a landlord forces them off their land.

In the first programme, one caller stated the following: ‘No special exceptions should be made for “special people”, such as someone in a car with National Assembly registration turning the wrong direction at a traffic signal. In this regard, the high officials or government members should be role models for the public; they should respect the laws even more than ordinary people. When high officials don’t follow the law, how can ordinary people are expected to abide by it? As far as I know, most people are not aware of what the law is, they just hear about it again and again, like they are thumped on the head with it as something they should abide by, but not the special people!’

The caller continued to criticize the way things are done in Cambodia. He may still be dissatisfied, but he expresses his views, and they are conveyed to other listeners as well as to people in power. The editorial team behind ‘The Road to Law’, as well as the entire WMC, masters the fine art of broadcasting relevant programs on sensitive issues in an often volatile political climate.

Of course, a radio programme like ‘The Road to Law’ cannot change the situation from one day to the next, but it can help in explaining the rule of law to people, and thus empower them in the way radio director Chea Sundaneth talks about; the programme can help people to understand, and from there try to protect their rights.

WMC grew out of the movement to increase women’s participation in the democratic process during the UN-sponsored elections in Cambodia in 1993. WMC’s original staff of five dedicated women has now grown to more than forty – mostly women, but also men. When spending time at WMC one will also meet children who work part time (after school, of course) doing children’s programs.

A number of WMC’s programs are sponsored by foreign aid – amongst them ‘The Road to Law’, which is broadcast in co-operation with DIHR. Running the programme for two years is expected to cost approximately US$155,000.

Ms Dina, who hosts ‘The Road to Law’, is very firm in her conviction that she only wants to work at an independent radio station. She does not want to convey the message of the power brokers, be they in government or in political opposition. She wants to communicate with ordinary people, and she wants to make Cambodia a better and more just society, regardless of political conviction. That’s why she works at WMC.

‘I like my job,’ says Ms. Dina, who has worked in radio for nine years. ‘I have done a lot of programs about women’s and children’s rights. I didn’t know much about the specifics of rule of law before, but since we started this programme, I have realized the importance of a legal system as the foundation of a society. And the more I come to understand about the rule of law as opposed to a legal system based on decrees and perhaps only a few powerful people, the stronger I feel about the necessity to convey to the public that we all – or most of us – share the need for a just society.’ This is why Ms. Dina often leaves her husband and baby daughter for short spells to go to the countryside to talk to people and record their stories for her sound pictures and her radio programme.

Her colleague, reporter Koh Tararith, feels much the same, and he, too, does much of the footwork for the sound pictures and the other reporting for ‘The Road to Law’. He has a degree in philosophy and studies political science full time alongside his full time job at WMC. ‘Yes, I know,’ he smiles at the question why he works at Women’s Media Centre. ‘I am very concerned about society and about human rights, and WMC was the best place to be to do something about it, so I volunteered here for a couple of years.’ Only with ‘The Road to Law’ was Koh Tararith hired full time with full salary. He works hard, and is highly dedicated to the programme.

He enjoys the process of developing the programme and finding new and better ways to relate the complicated and sensitive issues to listeners in an easily understandable and digestible way. He wants to involve people and to empower them. Most Cambodians feel overwhelmed if they have issues – let alone conflicts – with the state or authorities. And a lot of Cambodians still cannot read and write.

Like Ms. Dina, Koh Tararith had no prior knowledge of legal issues before working for ‘The Road to Law’. He does not claim to be an expert now, but his small office space at WMC is like a deep valley surrounded by mountains of heavy books on law and legal issues. ‘The more I come to understand about legal matters, the more I want to know,’ he says. Attracting ordinary people and ‘translating’ complicated laws and legal issues into common language for everyone to understand are the most important tasks of ‘The Road to Law’. This is why the editorial team, in addition to the journalists, includes a lawyer. The lawyer, Mr. Tim Chan Darrawuddh, is as dedicated as the rest of the team. He explains the finer and more complicated points of legalities to the journalists, so that they can ‘translate’ it in the broadcasts. Sometimes, when he feels a caller is still in the dark, after the experts in the studio have answered his questions, he calls him back to make sure that he got the message.

And even further in the background, behind the editorial staff of ‘The Road to Law’, one finds a dedicated group of Cambodian legal experts from several fields who participate both individually through occasional appearances on the programme, and collectively as an advisory group when the subjects for each programme are identified or a particularly complicated issue is to be related.

Once one gets involved in a radio programme like this, once one sees and hears the problems ordinary Cambodians experience in their daily life and meets the people who feel powerless in a system that cares mostly for the privileged, one cannot but try to do one’s bit. This must be why everyone involved in ‘The Road to Law’ shows such steadfast dedication to the programme, and as if speaking with one voice, they all say that it matters to try to make a difference, even if it is often an up-hill struggleThe air is hot and humid in Kompong Thom prison in Central Cambodia. The old walls are peeling. The prison was built by the French colonial power in 1900. Only one wing has been restored, thanks to aid from Australia. The prison is noted jokingly all over the country as the one with the ‘holes in the walls’ – the one from which escape is easy. A broad, rectangular hole (it is really only a slot) was built into the wall; this is where prisoners receive visitors, out in the open and under constant surveillance by the guards. Fruit and rice are passed through the slot from the street outside to the prisoners inside the wall. The prisoners bend their heads in order to see their visitors. A sudden rainfall scatters everyone; this particular visit is over, as everyone runs for cover from the heavy rain.

This Friday in May, Ms Chap Chandina is visiting the prison and interviewing prisoners for her weekly radio programme on rule of law in Cambodia, called ‘The Road to Law’. Chap Chandina is known to her listeners throughout the country as well as to friends, family and colleagues as Ms Dina.

One prisoner, a woman, thirty-five years old and mother of three children, tells Ms Dina of her plight; the interview will constitute part of a programme that focuses on pre-trial detention, to be broadcast in a few weeks. ‘My husband drinks, and he had two lovers – one of them a prostitute,’ says the woman. She couldn’t stand the situation and threw acid in her husband’s face. This took place about a month earlier. The children have been on their own since the acid attack. The husband is just out of hospital, recovered, but hardly the attractive man he used to be. His wife has forgiven him now. ‘I want to go home and care for him and for my children,’ says the woman. But her case has not been tried yet – and she does not know whether her husband will take her back.

She deeply regrets her deed, and when asked if she has a message for the listeners of ‘The Road to Law’’, she says, ‘Don’t do what I did. Nothing good comes of it.’ Had she known more about her rights and Cambodia’s legal system, she might not have been in prison. She might have divorced her husband instead.

While in Kompong Thom, Ms Dina and her reporter colleague, Mr Koh Tararith, interview other inmates: a convicted robber, and a very poor fisherman who killed his wife in a stupor and now tries to care for their three daughters. Besides the prisoners, the two reporters talk with the General Director of the prison, and a lawyer who works for an NGO, Cambodia’s Defenders’ Project (CDP), giving legal aid to poor people.

Mr So Inn, the lawyer who works for the legal aid organization, finds the programme ‘The Road to Law’ enlightening. It gives people without much – or any – education the opportunity to understand their legal rights and duties, it tells them how to file a complaint and deals with all the other complicated issues that have always been reserved for the privileged few with knowledge and power. In his work, So Inn sees how poor and uneducated people who are unaware of their rights very often spend a long time in pre-trial detention – even when accused for lesser crimes that do not warrant pre-trial detention. ‘Being lawyers, we always appeal for release. The law states that only accusation of serious crimes warrants pre-trial detention, but the wealthy always go free, while innocents are accused,’ says So Inn.

At the Central Market in Kompong Thom, quite a few people know Ms Dina’s programme.

Mr Eng Yitthy sells pots, shovels, buckets and the like from his market stall. He is an ardent listener of the radio programme ‘The Road to Law’, which is broadcast every Thursday from 10:50 to 11:50 AM. ‘I listen to it every week. It is highly interesting and useful. There are many of us who have little or no understanding of the law. The programme helps us by describing specific problems and telling how to solve them through the legal system. I have tried to call you several times, Ms Dina, but I haven’t yet managed to get through to you in the studio.’

The radio programme ‘The Road to Law’ uses short stories, ‘sound pictures’ and interviews to illustrate issues – be it the many conflicts about land ownership, civil law, constitutional law, penal law, divorce law, or whichever subject is the focus of a specific programme. The host, Ms Dina, has one or two guests in the studio: a lawyer, a prosecutor or a judge. Cambodia’s Commissioner for Human Rights has been there, as well as many representatives from human rights organizations that focus on legal issues in Cambodia. After a thorough and enlightening description of the specific issues, the telephone lines are opened so that callers from all over the country can air their problems with the law or the subject in question.

Eng Yitthy, the pottery seller, says that the short stories told in the programme create a good sense of understanding. They are real life drama, made up of interviews with people who have experienced something relevant in connection with a specific programme’s issue – e.g., civil law.

‘The Road to Law’ is one of many informative and educational programmes – most of which are directed towards women and children— broadcast on the popular radio station Women’s Media Centre (WMC).

‘Our radio station focuses on human rights,’ says Mrs Chea Sundaneth, the co-director who runs WMC Radio, ‘women’s and children’s in particular. We already have a programme focusing on child labour, which has run for three years. “The Road to Law” is directed towards everyone. The purpose is to explain people’s rights to the public, and to make people understand how to protect these rights. We started in January 2003. “The Road to Law” is important, and we have many listeners. It’s a popular programme; and sadly, we are the only radio station that covers these issues.’

‘As they have telephones of their own, most of those calling during the programme are middle class. So it is our duty to reach the poor people, listen to their problems and help them find ways to solve them. Experts are invited to the studio—legal experts, lawyers, victims, people from the NGOs—it depends on the issue.’

Chea Sundaneth notes with some pride that one of her greatest worries with ‘The Road to Law’ was whether the experts would participate and take unedited questions from listeners directly on air. ‘But once we got started, they came: judges and prosecutors. We even had Cambodia’s Commissioner for Human Rights. And even if they do worry a bit before we go on air – they are not used to this kind of direct confrontation—they are always happy afterwards to have taken and been able to answer questions from the public.’

‘We are creating a new kind of radio here in Cambodia. Before, we worried that people thought we were making up our stories; now, we not only point out injustices, we also bring recommendations to people. For example, we explain how to file a case in court: which documents are needed, how someone qualifies as a witness, and the like. And we have responsible people from society making pledges here – right on the air.’

WMC is the only independent radio station in Cambodia that has not at some point been closed down by government. One reason is that it goes to great lengths not to provoke the government. The team behind ‘The Road to Law’ is highly aware of the sensitivity of their subject, and they always make sure not to come up with direct accusations. So do not expect Ms Dina to come up with harsh criticism of the status quo whilst on the air. However, there is a lot of – often very harsh – criticism of Cambodia’s legal system (or lack thereof) in the programme, but this all comes from the callers. They want to know when a policeman is authorized to use force – be it beatings, shooting or issuing fines. They want to know why powerful people seem to be above the law. They want to know what to do when a landlord forces them off their land.

In the first programme, one caller stated the following: ‘No special exceptions should be made for “special people”, such as someone in a car with National Assembly registration turning the wrong direction at a traffic signal. In this regard, the high officials or government members should be role models for the public; they should respect the laws even more than ordinary people. When high officials don’t follow the law, how can ordinary people be expected to abide by it? As far as I know, most people are not aware of what the law is, they just hear about it again and again, like they are thumped on the head with it as something they should abide by, but not the special people!’

The caller continued to criticize the way things are done in Cambodia. He may still be dissatisfied, but he expresses his views, and they are conveyed to other listeners as well as to people in power. The editorial team behind ‘The Road to Law’, as well as the entire WMC, masters the fine art of broadcasting relevant programmes on sensitive issues in an often volatile political climate.

Of course, a radio programme like ‘The Road to Law’ cannot change the situation from one day to the next, but it can help in explaining the rule of law to people, and thus empower them in the way radio director Chea Sundaneth talks about; the programme can help people to understand, and from there try to protect their rights.

WMC grew out of the movement to increase women’s participation in the democratic process during the UN-sponsored elections in Cambodia in 1993. WMC’s original staff of five dedicated women has now grown to more than forty – mostly women, but also men. When spending time at WMC one will also meet children who work part time (after school, of course) doing children’s programmes.

A number of WMC’s programmes are sponsored by foreign aid – amongst them ‘The Road to Law’, which is broadcast in co-operation with DIHR. Running the programme for two years is expected to cost approximately US$155,000.

Ms Dina, who hosts ‘The Road to Law’, is very firm in her conviction that she only wants to work at an independent radio station. She does not want to convey the message of the power brokers, be they in government or in political opposition. She wants to communicate with ordinary people, and she wants to make Cambodia a better and more just society, regardless of political conviction. That’s why she works at WMC.

‘I like my job,’ says Ms Dina, who has worked in radio for nine years. ‘I have done a lot of programmes about women’s and children’s rights. I didn’t know much about the specifics of rule of law before, but since we started this programme, I have realized the importance of a legal system as the foundation of a society. And the more I come to understand about the rule of law as opposed to a legal system based on decrees and perhaps only a few powerful people, the stronger I feel about the necessity to convey to the public that we all – or most of us – share the need for a just society.’ This is why Ms Dina often leaves her husband and baby daughter for short spells to go to the countryside to talk to people and record their stories for her sound pictures and her radio programme.

Her colleague, reporter Koh Tararith, feels much the same, and he, too, does much of the footwork for the sound pictures and the other reporting for ‘The Road to Law’. He has a degree in philosophy and studies political science full time alongside his full time job at WMC. ‘Yes, I know,’ he smiles at the question why he works at Women’s Media Centre. ‘I am very concerned about society and about human rights, and WMC was the best place to be to do something about it, so I volunteered here for a couple of years.’ Only with ‘The Road to Law’ was Koh Tararith hired full time with full salary. He works hard, and is highly dedicated to the programme.

He enjoys the process of developing the programme and finding new and better ways to relate the complicated and sensitive issues to listeners in an easily understandable and digestible way. He wants to involve people and to empower them. Most Cambodians feel overwhelmed if they have issues – let alone conflicts – with the state or authorities. And a lot of Cambodians still cannot read and write.

Like Ms Dina, Koh Tararith had no prior knowledge of legal issues before working for ‘The Road to Law’. He does not claim to be an expert now, but his small office space at WMC is like a deep valley surrounded by mountains of heavy books on law and legal issues. ‘The more I come to understand about legal matters, the more I want to know,’ he says. Attracting ordinary people and ‘translating’ complicated laws and legal issues into common language for everyone to understand are the most important tasks of ‘The Road to Law’. This is why the editorial team, in addition to the journalists, includes a lawyer. The lawyer, Mr Tim Chan Darrawuddh, is as dedicated as the rest of the team. He explains the finer and more complicated points of legalities to the journalists, so that they can ‘translate’ it in the broadcasts. Sometimes, when he feels a caller is still in the dark, after the experts in the studio have answered his questions, he calls him back to make sure that he got the message.

And even further in the background, behind the editorial staff of ‘The Road to Law’, one finds a dedicated group of Cambodian legal experts from several fields who participate both individually through occasional appearances on the programme, and collectively as an advisory group when the subjects for each programme are identified or a particularly complicated issue is to be related.

Once one gets involved in a radio programme like this, once one sees and hears the problems ordinary Cambodians experience in their daily life and meets the people who feel powerless in a system that cares mostly for the privileged, one cannot but try to do one’s bit. This must be why everyone involved in ‘The Road to Law’ shows such steadfast dedication to the programme, and as if speaking with one voice, they all say that it matters to try to make a difference, even if it is often an up-hill struggle.

From DIHR’s homepage on Women’s Media Centre of Cambodia