Cambodia clamps down on environmental activists, NGOs

Ten members of the Cambodian environmental activist group Mother Nature were sentenced to six to eight years in prison earlier this month for conspiring against the state.

Three of the members of the group were also convicted of insulting Cambodia's King Norodom Sihamoni.

The young activists had long campaigned against the destruction of natural resources across the Southeast Asian country and had openly alleged links to corruption.

The group was charged with "plotting" against the Cambodian state after they investigated waste pollution in Phnom Penh's Tone Sap River in 2021. In addition, a group statement from an online meeting was found to be insulting to the king which led to the charges against three members.

Only five of the activists attended the trial. Four of them attended the sentencing and were swiftly arrested by authorities. One was not present for the sentencing and five other activists, including Spanish national Alejandro Gonzalez-Davison, the co-founder of Mother Nature, were convicted in absentia.

Jacob Sims, a Southeast Asia regional expert on transnational crime and rights issues, said that threats to any interests of Cambodia's powerful elites run the risk of a harsh crackdown.

"The real power in Cambodia lies not in its formal institutions, but in its complex and shadowy web of oligarchs with close ties to the prime minister's family. Wherever activists — across any sector — jeopardize the economic interests of this ruling elite, they risk the wrath of the formal Cambodian state apparatus," he told DW. 

"That is what happened in the recent case of overt court weaponization against the Mother Nature activists," he added.

A threat to civil society

Mother Nature Cambodia was founded in 2012 with the aim of protecting Cambodia's natural environment and human rights. For years, members of the group faced intimidation and threats and in 2017 it was deregistered as a nongovernment organization.  

But the group continued to advocate and in 2023 won a prestigious Right Livelihood award for their work. 

Sims says the crackdown on the group shows civil society in Cambodia is being "eviscerated."

"If concerned governments, multilaterals, international NGOs and global brands do not find it within themselves to stand with these courageous local activists and rapidly inject some accountability into this situation, it may be too late," said Sims. "We are witnessing the systematic evisceration of Cambodian civil society in real-time."

Civil society monitoring groups say Cambodia's civic space is "repressed." Union leaders and land rights activists have been jailed in recent years while humanitarian organizations and other NGOs have been threatened with dissolution.

A powerful ruling ‘dynasty'

The ruling Cambodian People's Party has faced little political threat to its power, and leading up to the 2023 elections Cambodia's electoral commission had already disqualified the country's main opposition, Cambodia's Candlelight Party.

Critics call Cambodia's leaders the "Hun Dynasty." Cambodia's former Prime Minister Hun Sen ruled the country for nearly four decades and was one of the longest-serving leaders in the world before power was handed over to his son Hun Manet in 2023.

Vanna Hay, leader of the Cambodia National Rescue Movement, now in exile in Japan, says that trials like that of Mother Nature Cambodia show that government corruption is severely threatening Cambodia's rule of law.

"Because the current government is totally corrupted, so-called systematic corruption, they protect those destroying the environment for their benefit," he said.

Edited by: Ole Tangen Jr