Late last year a story of a Cambodian couple who literally split their house in two to avoid divorce courts whizzed around the world.

The notion of justice in Cambodia does, indeed, seem to be strange.

A friend of ours has been working in Phnom Penh for the past year or two as a legal analyst for the United Nations Development Programme. Recently, she forwarded some case studies supplied by a Cambodian translator working on indigenous customary law documents.

The stories are, by turns, tragic, surreal and utterly impossible to comprehend. (Which, by the sound of things, could also be said about Phnom Penh’s roads, where, according to our latest letter from Cambodia, you can drive on the left or the right “depending upon your mood” and also on the pavement too.)

But I digress, back to those case studies:

Case 1:
A dog injured a man with a bite. Being enraged, the victim pulled his sword in order to kill the dog. But before that happened, the dog owner angrily screamed at the soon-to-be dog-killer. The two men then engaged in a more and more escalating argument till the dog owner stabbed and killed the other man. The victim’s family bought the murderer to the Krak Srok for justice. Krak Srok told the murderer to pay compensation in the property value of 16 buffaloes. As the man was unable to pay, he has to work for the victim’s family for his whole life.

Case 2:
A husband got very angry when his wife had rice spilt over dishes. They got argument and he took a carrying stick to beat her from the head but could not beat her because their farm cottage is very short. The argument paused a while and they had lunch together and suddenly the wife stop eating and walk out. Then the husband could not bear his anger he again took the carrying stick and thrust her on the kidney. She fall down and died immediately in pain.

Case 3:
In the buffalo sacrificing season, villagers gathered in the ceremony in which young men and women ate, drank, sang and danced happily together. Being drunk a young lad approached a young woman and touched her breast and patted her bottom. Being embarrassed and upset, the woman complained to the Yak Veu. At the end, families of both parties agreed to get the perpetrator to pay a pig and wine for a party to celebrate reconciliation.

Case 4:
There was a Prov man suffering from a severe tumer inside his buttock. The man is in poor physical strength and unable to perform any work. The tumer keeps spreading from one spot to another causing him to be somewhat like a handicapped person.

One day, villagers ask him to join them in a travel down the Se San river to purchase salt in Veun Say district. On their way back home from Veun Say, being considered useless by other travellers in the boat, the man was unloaded onto an isolated sandy island in the middle of the Se San river. Later in the afternoon, he saw a boat, with nearly ten people, passing by. He managed to negotiate for a hitch-hike. On the boat, he immediately saw an eight-headed naga. For fear of the naga he stayed put and calm. People in the boat asked him why he was left alone on the island and he explained to them accordingly.

A while later, people started asking each other what they wanted to eat. Everyone of said “Chicken.” This made the man believe that those people were not human. They must be the mighty spirits of something. If he said he wanted to eat chicken too there might be dangers of injuries or death. He thus said “No, I cannot eat chicken for fear of my tumer problem. I would rather eat fish, instead.” Then he saw the men pull a dead body from the river and started to eat the meat. He was so fearful of that.

Another while later, he saw a group of people weeping on the river bank because somebody just died from drowning. Then people on the boat asking each other again what they wanted to eat. They said they wanted an ox for beef. They then disembarked near a village in order to ask for an ox from a friend’s house. The house that those men referred to was instead a bush of Proteal plants near the river bank. The man then saw those men eat a dead Buddhist monk. After eating, they continued on their journey. Only a short while later in the trip, they came to a small village in which people were crying over the loss of a Budhist monk who died recently.

At this point people in the boat began to want to eat chicken, ox-meat and buffalo-meat then went to disembark at the village entrance near a bush Proteal plants. The village setting was irregular as it was closed to outsiders from going in and closed to insiders from coming out. Having been asked for chicken, ox-meat and buffalo-meat, the magic proteal plants answered “So sorry that there is no such meat for your need, because people in the village had sacrificed chicken blood, buffalo blood and wine to the spirits to protect the village and to make sure nobody enter or go through the village. The boat people said good-bye to the magic Proteal plants and continued on their journey.

Arriving at his village, the boat people disembarked him on the river bank and moved on happily. To his surprise, his tumer disappeared and his physical strength became normal so that he could even carry the heavy bag of salt into his village without any difficulty. All the villagers were astonished at his health condition. He then told the villagers all he had gone through and encountered. The villagers believed him and started organizing sacrificing ceremony for the village, planting magic Proteal plants and pooring chicken, ox and buffalo blood on the plants asking the spirits to protect the village ever after.