Inside Phnom Penh’s cop shop
In Teuk Thla Market, a warren of alleyways off of Russian
Boulevard in Phnom Penh’s Sen Sok district, bundles of plastic batons
and pistol holsters dangle from storefronts like bunches of bananas.
Racks of khaki slacks and shirts, stacks of peaked caps with patent
leather brims and navy nylon vests with reflective strips advertising
“POLICE” all testify to a fact of life in the Cambodian security
services: being a cop or a soldier in the Kingdom means spending a
little money.
Teuk Thla is a clearinghouse where soldiers, police and occasionally
criminals haggle over all things police- and military-related, from
footwear to stun guns, and even insignia of rank.
Interviews with buyers and sellers alike reveal a vicious cycle.
Government officials in charge of procurement sell state-owned gear to
vendors. They, in turn, sell it on to other police who flock to the
market after finding themselves under-equipped partly because much of
the gear intended for standard issue winds up in Teuk Thla instead.
Bunthoeun said he and his comrades come to Teuk Thla about twice a
year to supplement the often incomplete kits issued by their units.
“According to military policy, every soldier will be provided with a
set of military clothes, a hat and shoes twice every year, but when we
receive it, we don’t get all those things as announced,” he said.
“Sometimes, we receive only the clothes and hat, but are left without
shoes. And sometimes, we receive merely the clothes and shoes, but are
left without a hat or a hammock or the related equipment. So it is not
enough to use,” he continued.
“So to make up for the lack of that necessary equipment, we have to look to buy them from the market.”
Ironically enough, the goods that Buntheoun and others are forced to
buy in Teuk Thla originate in their departments’ own storehouses.
Soeun Chamroeun*, 34, a police officer working for the Ministry of
Interior, said that he often buys his National Police uniforms, hats,
shoes and other items from Teuk Thla, because the standard issue goods
he’s given by the ministry are second-rate.
“My unit has distributed to me only poor quality clothes, shoes and
hats, but they have sold the good quality ones to the market,” he said.
“If I want to get the good quality clothes and other related gear, I
have to find it and buy it from the market.”
An officer at the Ministry of National Defense, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity, said that at least some of the military goods
funnelled into Teuk Thla were from high-ranking officials taking
advantage of Cambodia’s notoriously over-inflated soldier statistics to
requisition surplus goods.
“As far as I know, the reason why military clothes and kit are still
being sold illegally at markets … is because of corrupt
high-ranking-military officials, because they have inflated soldier
numbers,” he said.
“Now, they still have a lot of names of ghost soldiers [on the rolls]
at the ministry. The military clothes and other military materiel that
are sold at markets … were intended for the ghost soldiers,” he added.
The officer gave an example of a unit with 800 soldiers whose
commander had listed their number at 1,000. The 200 spare sets of
uniforms and equipment, he said, were sold on the black market.
But it isn’t just soldiers and policemen taking advantage of the goods on offer at Teuk Thla.
Ou Borom*, a 35-year-old moto taxi driver, bought a military hat and T-shirt from a shop in Phsar Teuk Thla last week.
“I am a civilian, and a motordop. The reason I bought the military
hat and T-shirt to wear is because I like it,” he said, before
acknowledging that the gear came with other benefits as well.
“On the other hand, in case I forget my helmet and I’m driving my
motorbike in Phnom Penh, I will wear the military hat and traffic police
will not stop me because they’ll think that I’m in the military,” he
added.
However, not everyone has such relatively benign motivations for decking themselves out like an authority figure.
Fake cops are arrested on a regular basis, said Lieutenant General
Chhay Sinarith, deputy director-general of the General Commissariat of
the National Police.
“According to the reports from our municipal and provincial police,
due to the sales of National Police and military clothes, there have
been many people passing themselves off as policemen or military or
military police, and they bought those uniforms or clothes from
markets,” he said.
“They wore police or military clothes in order to threaten or beat other people, and created problems in their communities.”
Most vendors at Teuk Thla acknowledge that it is illegal for
civilians to buy the goods they sell – as it is to sell them, in fact –
but they maintain that they aren’t the ones to judge.
The returns are worth the risk, they say, especially when they can pay police informants to tip them off to upcoming raids.
“I pay $30 every month to a local police officer to alert me in
advance if there are military police or police coming to crack down on
my sales,” said vendor Huy Kunthear*, who said her stock came from
corrupt commanders out in the provinces, as well as military drop-outs.
“In general, I sell these things to the public, but most of my
clients are those who work in the military, military police or police,”
she added.
Hem Nhim*, another vendor, said that he, too, pays $20 to $30 a month to local police and military police to avoid crackdowns.
“I think that this business has been good for my family, but it is
not safe, because selling this military kit is prohibited,” he said,
adding that he “will continue this business forever,” or at least as
long as authorities fail to clamp down on it.
That could take a while. Fellow vendor Hun Sopheap* said she has been
selling in Teuk Thla for more than 15 years, and that like Nhim, she
found it to be lucrative, generally earning anywhere from $20 to just
over $30 on a typical day.
“I decided to sell all types of these things because it was a good
business for me, and I could make a good living every day,” she said
Her inventory, she added, comes in once every month or two from
people who identified themselves as military and police officers working
in the logistics units of the ministries of National Defense and
Interior.
Lieutenant General Sinarith of the National Police told the Post that
the production and purchase of uniforms and kit falls under the
Ministry of Interior’s Logistics and Financial Department.
“But regarding the selling of National Police uniforms or other
related gear in the markets, I do not know where they got them from,” he
said.
San Chey, a coordinator for the Affiliated Network for Social
Accountability in East Asia and the Pacific, said the proliferation of
illegal goods at Teuk Thla could be attributed to a breakdown in
authorities’ management of resources, and was a waste of government
money.
“I think it’s the worst case; it shows poor management in the
military and police sector,” he said. “And [it’s] not only uniforms. I
was told that some guns and bullets were sold secretly there.”
Some Teuk Thla vendors did acknowledge that guns and ammunition were
available at the market, but said they weren’t as easily purchased as
other equipment.
“The state institutions, especially from the military and police,
they look like they’re taking no steps to solve this,” Chey added.
Multiple officials in the Ministry of Interior, the National Military
Police, the Ministry of National Defense and its Military Logistics
Department could not be reached for comment.
However, Brigadier General Kheng Tito, spokesman for the National
Military Police, said this week that vendors caught selling military
clothing or equipment could face up to six months in prison, and that
for civilians, even wearing so much as a military or police hat was
“strictly prohibited”.
To curb the fraudulent use of official clothing and equipment – as
well as illegal guns – police are told to check on those wearing
incomplete uniforms, Kheng said.
Teuk Thla, he continued, was the site of perennial crackdowns, but even so, vendors were back to business as usual within days.
“Our National Military Police go to crack down on this market at
least three times every year, but when we raid those vendors seem to
know about our activity in advance, so they moved their goods from their
shop and escaped from the market,” he said, adding that a recent raid
had resulted in some arrests.
“But it was strange,” he continued. “A few days after our police
crackdown, the vendors started selling those goods at their shops
[again].”
* Names have been changed.
Additional reporting by Stuart White.
Additional reporting by Stuart White.
IMPERSONATION
In 2011, Cambodian-Australian Tim Kimsuth was given two years in
prison for impersonating a two-star general. He was found to be in
possession of the uniform and badges of rank during a search of his
apartment after he was arrested with his driver and bodyguard, who were
using an M-16 to threaten a car they were passing. Kimsuth told the
court at the time that he had bought the get-up for about $30 at Teuk
Thla not for nefarious purposes, but simply “because [he] liked it”.
The same month, a former adviser to Senate President Chea Sim,
Ponlork Ho, was convicted of presenting himself as a three-star general
as part of a massive fraud scheme he perpetuated along with two
co-defendants. He also bought his uniform and insignia of rank from Teuk
Thla Market.
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