Mob rule

From KI Media

Cambodian police arrived in the nick of time to save a British man from a lynch mob after he allegedly savagely beat his girlfriend on the street, an officer said Monday.

David Finch, 42, of Birmingham, had allegedly been punching and kicking his 20-year-old Cambodian girlfriend on the footpath when his neighbours decided they could take no more, said Chhit Vuthy, deputy police chief of Psar Kandal 1 in the capital, the dpa reported.

"They formed a mob and managed to hit him hard in the head but we arrived just in time and then they had to let him go," Vuthy said. "He has no respect for Cambodians, and they were angry."

Mob and extrajudicial killings of suspected criminals remain relatively common in Cambodia.

It is certainly true that vigilante justice is meted out indiscriminately in Cambodia. One must always be careful.

A friend had a few dollars stolen out of her bag in the Russian market. If she had called out "thief (joao)" then that person would probably either have been killed by a mob or would have spent years in prison. A harsh price for stealing a few dollars.

As for David Finch, who "he allegedly savagely beat his girlfriend on the street", there is a certain frontier justice to the beating he received.