- Six environmental activists were held in custody in Cambodia from Nov. 23-25 as they were investigating illegal logging in a national park.
- The six, including Goldman Prize winner Ouch Leng, were released without charge, after earlier being accused of unauthorized entry into Veun Sai-Siem Pang National Park.
- Their arrest is the latest in a string of crackdowns against environmentalists and journalists, which has accelerated under Cambodia’s new prime minister.
- Veteran activists have slammed the arrest as yet more state “terrorism” against civil society for exposing the plunder of the country’s environment by politically connected operatives.
STUNG TRENG, Cambodia — Six environmental activists in Cambodia have been released without charge after being arrested and held for nearly three days by Cambodian military. The activists, including Ouch Leng, a winner of the prestigious Goldman Prize for grassroots environmentalists, had been investigating an illegal logging operation in a national park. Their arrest is just the latest in a string of crackdowns against environmentalists and journalists in the Southeast Asian nation.
At roughly 8:10 a.m. on Nov. 23, Ouch Leng and fellow activists Tat Oudom, Heng Sros, Out Latin, Men Mat and Prum Mao were detained by the military in Talat commune, Sesan district, roughly 10 kilometers (6 miles) from a known logging operation inside Veun Sai-Siem Pang National Park in the country’s northern Stung Treng province. Authorities withheld the activists’ whereabouts for roughly 12 hours before civil society groups were able to confirm their arrest.
On the morning of Nov. 24, the group was transferred to the Stung Treng police commissariat, where they were interrogated and held until their release on the afternoon of Nov. 25.
Men Kong, spokesperson for the Stung Treng provincial administration, said the activists were arrested “because they entered an area protected and managed by the authorities to prevent illegal loggers. It is an area that is protected by the authorities [who are] responsible for protecting the forest in [Veun Sai-Siem Pang National Park]. They entered the authorized protected area. They were advised [against entering protected areas] yet continued entering the area.”
Kong added that the activists had entered a protected area without permission, but hadn’t trespassed onto private land.
Chea Sopheak, deputy provincial prosecutor, declined calls from Mongabay and didn’t respond to messages asking whether the activists would be charged, although he was seen entering the Stung Treng police commissariat by human rights monitors shortly before the activists were released.
Like many swaths of Cambodian land with protected status, Veun Sai-Siem Pang National Park hasn’t been zoned, meaning there’s no distinction between core zones — which are deemed off-limits to all without official permission — and buffer zones, community-use zones and other zones with more relaxed restrictions.
Census data and satellite imagery clearly show entire villages within the national park, much of which were absorbed into the park following a nearly fivefold expansion of its boundaries in 2023. These boundaries aren’t routinely marked on the ground, and maps are rarely made public by the Ministry of Environment.
The national park is regarded as one of the more ecologically significant parks in Cambodia and is known to be home to the critically endangered giant ibis (Thaumatibis gigantea), as well as sun bears (Helarctos malayanus) and clouded leopards (Neofelis nebulosa), both of which are listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.
‘Tragically, nothing new in Cambodia’
Ouch Leng, born in 1975 to a family of poor farmers, went on to found the NGO Cambodia Human Right Task Force. He won the Goldman Prize in 2016 for his undercover work that helped expose the scale of illegal logging operations across Cambodia. Since at least 2020, he has been arrested repeatedly.
Most recently, in 2021, Leng, Sros, Mat and another activist, Choup Cheang, were arrested in Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary as they documented forest crimes linked to a powerful timber-trafficking network.
Leng and Oudom are featured in a new France24 documentary that investigates whether the sale of carbon credits helps to prevent illegal logging in Cambodia (Mongabay’s work was also featured in the documentary). Their arrest came a day after the documentary aired. The Ministry of Environment has since dismissed the documentary’s findings, claiming it misleads the public.
“These kidnappings are nothing but terrorism,” Marcus Hardtke, a veteran forest activist with two decades of experience working in Cambodia, said of the activists’ arrest. He said Cambodian authorities “terrorize” locals, media, civil society and everyone who witnesses their crimes.
“That is tragically nothing new in Cambodia, and the rape of the forest continues and even accelerates under the Hun Manet regime,” Hardtke added, referring to the Cambodian prime minister, who took office last year.
But the continued crackdown hasn’t deterred the group of environmental activists from investigating the logging operations that contribute to Cambodia’s chronically high rates of deforestation.
When the team was arrested at Krola Pous mountain inside Veun Sai-Siem Pang National Park, they had been near a land concession that, in 2022, was awarded to locally owned company TSMW. Mongabay reported last year that TSMW appeared to be controlled by Meuk Saphannareth, deputy director of Cambodia’s prisons department and a three-star military general.
TSMW’s logging operation has seen trees — not just within but also outside the concession — felled at a rapid pace. Leng and his team have previously investigated the company’s activities and provided on-the-ground confirmation of what satellite imagery clearly shows: that TSMW is logging the rainforest inside Veun Sai-Siem Pang National Park — where logging operations are legally forbidden — and laundering the timber through its concession.
Some of this timber is then supplied to Angkor Plywood, the company at the heart of Cambodia’s largest timber-trafficking network, investigations have shown. Yet despite this evidence being published repeatedly by media and civil society groups, TSMW continues to operate with impunity. Meanwhile, local journalist Kim Den was arrested in September and charged with illegally clearing forest after he reported on the company’s logging operation.
Veun Sai-Siem Pang endured its worst year on record for deforestation in 2023. According to Global Forest Watch data, some 5,330 hectares (13,170 acres) of forest were lost. TSMW began clearing forest in 2022; that year, roughly 5,200 hectares (12,850 acres) of forest cover disappeared.
Shooting the messenger
The arrest of the six activists comes after prominent investigative journalist Mech Dara was imprisoned for nearly a month in October. On Nov. 6, a Cambodian court sentenced environmental and human rights activist Koet Saray to four years in prison. Back in July, four members of Cambodian NGO Mother Nature Cambodia were sentenced to between six and eight years in prison.
Cambodia has long proven a dangerous, even deadly, place for environmentalists. But since August 2023, when Hun Manet took over as prime minister from his long-ruling father, Hun Sen, the crackdown on activists, journalists and civil society groups has intensified, creating a chilling effect on the country’s nascent environmental movement.
Heng Kimhong, president of the Cambodian Youth Network, told Mongabay the group was closely monitoring the situation in Stung Treng and that he was deeply concerned by the increasing number of arrests.
“If the government charges them with a crime, it will reflect a further failure of the government regarding freedom of participation,” he told Mongabay by phone. “The international community will see that Cambodia is not committed to restoring democracy, is not committed to upholding basic human rights and is not committed to protecting national resources. Environmental activists continue to face arrest, legal harassment, and danger at all times.”
While Kimhong noted that Environment Minister Eang Sophalleth had introduced new policies to protect the environment, he said that in reality, more and more people were being arrested for their efforts to protect the environment. “It calls into question the government’s commitment to restoring the country’s forest cover to 60% by 2050 and it fails in their commitment to protect the forest,” Kimhong said. “They are not really committed to allow the public to engage in forest protection.”
Reporter who revealed deforestation in Cambodia now charged with deforestation
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