Members of the Mother Nature organization were sentenced to eight years in prison. According to Human Rights Watch, Hun Manet, who inherited his father’s position as prime minister, is harming his citizens.
Ten environmental activists have been sentenced to prison in Cambodia. The sentence handed down on Tuesday was for plotting against the government and insulting the country’s king, reports news agency Reuters.
Five of the accused were arrested immediately after the trial, said the founder of Mother Nature Alejandro Gonzales-Davidson news agency Reuters. Three of the convicts were sentenced to eight years in prison, there is no more detailed information about the sentences of the others.
– This administration is detached from reality. It has shown us how inhumane and cruel it can be to those who dare to stand up for what is right, Gonzales-Davidson said of the court’s decision.
– However, this is not in vain. Today, a new generation of activists has been created, he continued.
Gonzales-Davidson was one of those convicted. He was already deported in 2015, so he received his sentence in absentia.
The human rights organization criticized Cambodia
The human rights organization Human Rights Watch has already criticized Cambodia for the trial of environmental activists. The organization said in the middle of Junethat supporters of the accused and some media representatives were not allowed to participate in the public hearing.
– Prime Minister of Cambodia Hun Manet shows his father Hun Sen as seeking to imprison environmental activists instead of acknowledging their contributions to Cambodian society, said Human Rights Watch’s deputy Asia director Bryony Lau.
Hun Sen served as the country’s prime minister before his son Hun Manet.
– Prosecuting these activists harms the environment and all Cambodians who have the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, Lau continued.
The country’s government has previously denied that the trial was political. According to the government, critics are not prosecuted in the country, only criminals.
In June 2021, police arrested members of the organization for documenting sewage flowing into the Tonle Sap River near the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh. Four days later, the court brought charges against the detainees for defamation and conspiracy.
reported in his award-winning documentary last year that at the beginning of this decade, the Cambodian leadership promised that the main Mekong riverbed would not be dammed this decade. Still, it has allowed the Cambodian giant to continue exploration in the area. According to experts, it is quite likely that the dam will be built.
Between 2001 and 2015, a third of Cambodia’s primary forests were cleared, and the loss of trees accelerated faster than anywhere else in the world, the World Resources Institute estimates, according to the news agency AFP
A large part of the cleared land has been granted to companies as business licenses, which, according to experts, have driven deforestation and expropriation in the country.
Updated at 9:47: Added Gonzalo-Davidson’s comment and the country’s government’s position.