‘Political prisoners’ partitioned in Prey Sar
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/p ... d-prey-sar
Thu, 9 June 2016
Mech Dara and Shaun Turton
A new set of security measures at Prey Sar prison, designed to stop rampant drug use at the facility, is instead being selectively applied to prisoners being held in a politically sensitive case related to an ongoing sex scandal involving opposition leader Kem Sokha.
Prison authorities have used glass partitions in the visiting area to keep Yi Soksan and Nay Vanda – jailed human rights workers from Adhoc – from having physical contact with their loved ones, the detainees’ families have said, while visitors to other inmates said they had been able to interact freely with those they had come to see.
Nuth Savna, spokesman for the Interior Ministry’s General Department of Prisons, said the partitions stemmed from a policy implemented in recent months to prevent drug exchanges between prisoners and visitors after the government’s own probe found substance abuse was rife in the Kingdom’s jails. He said the partitions were normal procedure for all prisoners.
But at Prey Sar yesterday, several people who had just visited relatives said they were allowed to mingle as they pleased.
“We sit face to face at the same table and can hold and touch each other’s hands,” one woman said. “We even saw one couple kissing.”
But according to their families, Soksan and Vanda – who are being held in CC1, the male section of Prey Sar – the new glass partitions are being used during closely monitored family visits. ...