Wen Ksor was beaten on the road home, and no one was arrested

Wen Ksor was followed and attacked on his way back from visiting his cousin. Officers were there. They did not stop the man, and they did not answer him when he asked why.

The man this happened to

Wen Ksor was born in 1960 and lives in Plei Teng village, in Tan Son district, Gia Lai province. He had gone to see his cousin, across the bridge about two miles from his house. It was an ordinary visit, and he was on his way home.

He did not know that a young Vietnamese man on a motorcycle had begun to follow him. The man attacked him. Wen Ksor ran, and there was no one else on the road: only him and the man chasing him. He shouted for help until neighbours came out, and his family took him to hospital.

In his own account of it, he fell because he was hurt and frightened. His forehead and face struck the ground, his eye was damaged, and he bled badly. He spent a week in hospital and came home still unwell.

What he asked the police

Officers were present. They said nothing, they did not arrest the man who had beaten him, and they let him go.

Why did you not stop the man and arrest him? He was beating me. Why do you not care? Why are you not doing your job?

They did not answer him. Later, when the police came to his house to see him, he asked them again whether the man who hit him had been arrested. He says they never replied.

What we are reporting, and what we are not

This is Wen Ksor’s own account, given to us after he came home from hospital. We are reporting what he says was done to him and what he says the officers did and did not do. No charge appears to have been brought against anyone, and we have seen no police record of the attack.

Why it matters

A beating on a road between two villages is not, by itself, a matter of state. What makes it one is what followed: officers present who made no arrest, and a man left to ask, twice, why his case was not worth their attention. That silence is the part our people recognise.