Mike (narration): Welcome to the Mongabay Newscast. I’m your cohost Mike DiGirolamo. Bringing you weekly conversations with experts, authors, scientists, and activists, working on the front lines of conservation, shining a light on some of the most pressing issues facing our planet and holding people in power to account. This podcast is edited on Gadigal land.

Today’s guest on the Newscast is Mongabay features writer. Gerry Flynn based in Cambodia. He joins us today to discuss a recent investigation with contributor, Nehru Pry. This latest feature is part of a series on land rights in Southeast Asia investigating how extractive industries such as mining or oil and gas impact Indigenous and local communities and the health of ecosystems. What you’re about to hear is a story concerned with a community forest in a remote part of Cambodia. Known as the Phnom Chum Rok Sat Community Forest. A once vibrant community that used its lush surroundings to support themselves and draw in a vital ecotourism venture. That drastically changed this year when a mining company known as Lin Vatey began cordoning off the majority of this forest from locals in what Gerry describes as a privatization of a public land.

Additionally, this mining company has ties to prominent Cambodian military officials and their families. While community members of this forest have pushed back on that privatization. They have been arrested or jailed and face continuing persecution.

Mike: Gerry, welcome to the Mongabay Newscast it’s great to have you with us.

Gerry: Always good to see you again, Mike. No, thank you for having me.

Mike: Absolutely. So, before we get into what’s going on in Phnom Chum Rok Sat community forest, can you tell me first a little bit about the Indigenous community that has lived there the Kuy and what they used this forest for, can you paint a picture for us?

Gerry: Sure. Yeah. So, the Kuy are one of 24 Indigenous ethnic groups in Cambodia, and they’re probably one of the largest. Traditionally, they’ve hunted, practiced rotational farming, sustainably harvested medicinal plants, timber for housing, herbs, mushrooms, and other vegetables for foods, all from the forest.

In short, they’ve been the forest custodians in Cambodia for decades but, they’re rarely acknowledged or incorporated into government policy. They often lack political representation, and their ancestral land is actually very rarely recognized by the government. You know, the government has introduced mechanisms in 2009 to allow Indigenous communities to collectively apply for a land title but only out of the 455 Indigenous communities across Cambodia, fewer than 10 percent have actually been granted these titles. So, you’ve got a lot of these communities that just don’t own their ancestral land. I mean compounding this, then you have rampant deforestation across Cambodia, including the forests that these Indigenous communities have relied on. So as a result, you know, their cultures are, are really being eroded.

Because they have a very spiritual connection to the forests, to mountains, the rivers. And so, with a lot of the changes that are coming through Cambodia, you know, these cultures are kind of being broken down. Their languages are being spoken by fewer and fewer people. And their traditional roles as forest guardians is really being undermined by the need for economic development.

I think some of these communities across Cambodia, they’ve even come into conflict with conservationists. You know, there are some land disputes, particularly with large projects that seek to generate carbon credits. But I would argue that large scale agricultural plantations mining operations illegal logging operations. These have probably done more to undermine the efficacy of these communities as forest protectors. And so, we do have some efforts that have been made to safeguard the rights of Cambodia’s Indigenous communities, but realistically, whether that’s done through national law, international law, through conservation projects or development initiatives, the simple fact is that land is such a valuable commodity in Cambodia, the country’s elites will always find a way to grab it. You know, no matter how much protection is really conferred upon it. And that’s sort of what’s happened in Stung Treng province at Phnom Chum Rok Sat at Community Forest.

Mike: So, you traveled there with them. What did they show you?

Gerry: So, we visited the community forest, which has actually now been largely cordoned off.

There are checkpoints at the main entrances. There’s a border that has been dug around this forest. So, entry is actually quite restricted. The community members, of course, having lived and worked there for a long time, know many different ways in. So, we were able to go and to see the destruction that’s currently being wrought upon it. You know, a lot of the forest has already been leveled. So, a lot of clear cutting we also saw timber that was seized by the community when the sort of logging began to spike earlier this year, around May. Members of the community wanted to prevent the sale of that timber. And so, they confiscated it from the loggers. But we also saw the ecotourism venture that the community had started there with the support of some international organizations. And it was, it was quite eerie to walk around this abandoned ecotourism venture. You’ve got lodging, a community information center, these sort of signs identifying the various tree species. And it’s a beautiful part of Cambodia. You can see why ecotourism actually could have brought a lot of benefits to this community. But all of this has been set in motion by a mining company.

Mike: And the company that we’re referring to here is called Lin Vatey. And they mine marble, correct?

Gerry: Yes, yeah, so they were incorporated in 2019 they’re headed well directed by two Cambodians and one Chinese national. So the Chinese national actually runs another mining company in Cambodia. Whereas the two Cambodians involved on the board at least they don’t seem to have any mining experience but they do have some very powerful connections to the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces. And so, it’s largely, I think, through their connections to powerful individuals that they’ve been able to acquire so much of this community forest.

Mike: And we’re going to get into the specifics of that, about how that happened. But first, before we get there, can we talk about when did Lin Vatey start trying to establish themselves in this area? Because the area as we know is supposed to be a community forest that was created in agreement with the forest administration in Cambodia in 2017. Yet it’s being exploited. So, can you walk us back on how this started happening? How are they able to exploit this loophole, so to speak?

Gerry: Sure. Yeah, so in 2020 Lin Vatey conducted a six-month survey of Phnom Chum Rok Sat community forest and for a time that was the end of it, you know, the community saw the mining company come in, they saw them conducting geological surveys, but nothing much happened for a little while. But then in 2022, the company was then seemingly awarded a 700-hectare plot of land within the community forest. Now we don’t know if that is for exploration or for extraction. There are two separate licenses in Cambodia. But we don’t know that because there is a complete lack of transparency around mining licenses. Who they are awarded to, when they were awarded, you know, we don’t know about the supply chain whether that marble is then sold internationally and if so, where is it going or whether it’s simply sold domestically. We don’t even know whether an environmental impact assessment has actually been conducted. A lot of the times companies will say that they have done it, but often it’s really more of a rubber stamp process. Very little studying or assessment is actually made, but then the Ministry of Environment will sign off on it and allow it to happen. And we do know in Cambodia that in the cases of other mining companies who have also began operations in protected areas or within ecologically important forests often the mining will begin prior to actually beginning any of the legal processes to acquire a license. And that’s sometimes that’s kind of what those powerful Cambodians are on the board for. They are able to then secure the paperwork after the company has made sure that this is an area we want to mine and we’re going to need the proper paperwork just to cover ourselves later on.

Mike: But the area is supposed to be a community forest. So can you tell us a little bit about that sort of legal arrangement that is supposed to be happening and why it’s not being followed in this instance.

Gerry: So, community forests have existed in Cambodia since around 2002. And basically, the idea is that a community would register with the Forestry Administration to be recognized as a community. And then once they’re formally recognized, they’re able to sign an agreement with the Forestry Administration. And this agreement it puts the community in charge of managing the forest. So, they’re able to determine how those resources within the forest are used. They’re able to exclude outsiders. They’re able to establish eco-tourism ventures. They are allowed to harvest non timber forest products. But they’re not granted ownership. So, they can’t sell or rent the rights to the forest. And there are very strict rules on the sale of timber to kind of prevent the community from simply logging the forest. And in the case of Phnom Chum Rok Sat, the community was formalized in 2014. They had actually been kind of patrolling the forest informally before that, trying to deter illegal loggers, because they’re obviously…there were many valuable timber species in that, a lot of old growth forest because it’s quite a remote part of Cambodia. But they eventually got their agreement with the forestry administration signed in 2017. And then they set about demarcating a legal border around 4,153 hectares of forest and mountain up in Stung Treng province. But the problem with the community forests is that there’s very weak protection conferred upon them. There’s minimal law enforcement, as is often down to the communities themselves. Sometimes you’ve got conflicting jurisdictions, such as in this particular case where the area is also partly managed by the Ministry of Environment and then partially managed by the Forestry Administration, who have very different goals, different budgets. And of course, you know, you have across Cambodia, in all sectors, endemic corruption and the power of these elites, whether they be political, military, or business elites. They have the power to kind of intimidate a lot of these communities you know, so the conservation of forests and the protection of basic rights really, they will always be trumped by opportunities for economic development in Cambodia, sadly.

Mike: So, this situation is…what I hear you saying here is obviously it’s not the only instance of this occurring. It happens in other areas.

Gerry: Correct. Yeah, I mean, we’ve covered very similar stories in various different provinces across Cambodia. But I mean, the story is almost always the same, right? It’s powerful individuals, often acting through companies that they are, you know, associated with that are able to effectively privatize large chunks or in some cases the entirety of these community forests. You know, I think we saw a similar case late last year in Preah Vihear province, which is near the Thai border in Cambodia. Where the perpetrator of the land grab was actually the deputy provincial governor who himself is a well-known timber trafficker. So, you have these cases where the people behind these forest crimes are the people that are specifically in place to try and prevent them from happening. So I think in a way, this story is kind of a microcosm for how Cambodia as a country functions.

Mike: And so, speaking of when the land grab starts to occur, you were told here by local residents that deforestation really started taking off in May of this year. And then this boundary started getting cleared in the forest. And by early July, there was like a new border in the forest that had encircled a section Spanning more than 3,000 hectares. What exactly does this mean? Visually, what does that sort of look like?

Gerry: Sure, yeah, I mean, the, the border itself is largely a sort of a cleared path through the forest effectively sort of a road almost, but what we have seen, and you can, we’ve seen this on satellite imagery we can see this in Global Forest Watch data when we’ve seen it with our own eyes on the ground roughly two-thirds of the entire community forest, has now been sort of sectioned off and effectively privatized. And within that sort of roughly 3,000-hectare kind of border, the company has just begun clear cutting all of the forest. And a lot of forest outside of that area has also started to disappear, particularly the large older, more valuable trees. So, it’s very clear that the company is there to extract every kind of resource that they can from the community forest. It’s once again, it’s, as we see a lot in Cambodia, it’s public forests being turned into private fortunes, sadly.

Mike: I mean, this is quite, quite alarming and I imagine it was incredibly alarming to see. And so, what happened was that community members wrote to the ministry of environment expressing their concerns. And I would like you to sort of walk me through what happened here, because I think it’s really important. So, they referenced a really specific letter—in their letter—and that letter is called letter number 1456. Can you explain what this was, and what were the community members saying about this letter?

Gerry: So, on June 2nd of this year members of the Phnom Chum Rok Sat Community Forest, they actually wrote to the Ministry of Environment requesting an intervention as over the course of May all of this deforestation had spiked really hard across their forest. This is when the border was still being dug around that sort of 3,000-hectare section of the forest. And in the community’s request for an intervention they reference this, as you said, letter number 1456, which was seemingly dated on June 26th of 2023 and is basically a formal request for 3, 064 hectares of land. So again, roughly two-thirds of the community forest. Now, we’ve not been able to find a copy of that letter. We’ve requested the Ministry of Environment to sort of verify some of the details. We’ve not had any response from them. We know that community members who have seen it well, I’ll get more into what happened to them later on. But we also do know that on July 6th, 2023 Ke Kol Sophea who is one of the board members of Lin Vatey, the mining company, she wrote to the Stung Treng Provincial Governor for permission to erect border posts around a 3, 064 hectare plot of land, largely focused within the community forest. And this letter from July last year also references Letter 1456 from June last year. So, while we haven’t seen this original letter, we have seen enough evidence of its existence to sort of be able to understand what it really asks for.

Mike: And so, let’s get a little bit deeper into what is in the letter. Um, I believe there’s 10 individuals specifically named in the letter. So why is that so important? Can you elucidate on that for us?

Gerry: Yeah, I mean, it’s pretty crazy, because it’s basically, from what we can tell about letter number 1456, ten individuals seemingly just reached out to the government to ask if they could just have 3, 064 hectares of land you know, much of which is in the community forest. Which is a pretty bizarre request, you know, most normal people can’t just ask the government for, for that much land. And while we don’t necessarily know whether or not uh, we don’t have any letters showing who approved it or when but the fact that this border that has been dug around and through the community forest shows that it matches pretty well with some maps that we’ve seen that accompanied some of these documents that we have been able to get our hands on. And even more interesting really is who the 10 individuals actually are.

Mike: And can we talk about some of those connections, some of those 10 individuals?

Gerry: Yeah, so, the way that it is presented from the documents that we’ve seen, it makes it seem like these are ten unconnected, separate individuals. However, we’ve found um, so, the most striking thing is that first, two of these people are Ke Kol Sophea and Vongsen Pisey. Who are both the directors, the Cambodian directors, of the mining company, Lin Vatey. But the more we sort of dug into who these other eight people are, you know, we begin to find that actually all of them are connected through either familial ties, through work, or through connections to the military, back to these two directors of the mining company. And it’s worth noting that actually Ke Kol Sophea her husband, is deputy director of Cambodia’s military intelligence unit, which is effectively Cambodia’s spy agency. While Vongsen Pisey, she’s the daughter of Vong Pisen, who is the commander in chief of the entire Cambodian armed forces. So probably one of the most powerful men in the country, and arguably the most powerful military figure in the country. So these are, that makes a little bit more sense as to how these people were able to simply ask the government, please give us that land normal people simply couldn’t do that.

Mike: So how do we, how do we have assurance or know that these 10 individuals are named in the letter? What was the evidence that showed us this connection?

Gerry: Yeah, so these, 10 names they were repeated in the community’s letter to the Ministry of Environment this year. And then they were also named again in the July 6th letter from Ke Kol Sophea to the Stung Treng Provincial Governor. So we are pretty confident that these names are the ones in the request, the original request for the land in letter 1456. But again, we have not been able to see or find a copy of letter 1456.

Mike: And none of Mongabay’s questions were answered or responded to by Lin Vitey or several of the people that had connection to this letter, right?

Gerry: Correct, yeah, we reached out to the company through the contact details listed on their ministry of commerce records. So, email, phone numbers phone numbers of the directors. None of these people, we got no reply and none of these people responded to any of the calls or messages that we sent. We did have one person connected to the company who I believe is a lawyer with family ties to Ke Kol Sophea. She read the messages on Telegram, the messaging app. It’s very popular here in Cambodia. She read those messages and the questions and then deleted them.

Mike: And that lawyer’s name is Chandara Norphealey

Gerry: So that was the extent of engagement that we were able to get from the mining company, sadly.

Mike: And also, before we continue on, one of these individuals in this letter is the Director General of Nokor Wat Media. Can you talk about the significance of that? I think that’s really interesting to note.

Gerry: Sure, yeah, I mean, so, Ke Kol Sophea she is best known as the Director General of Nokor Wat Media because, and this is effectively a pro government media outlet. It used to be a print newspaper. Now it’s just online. But it’s largely disseminates Cambodia’s government’s talking points republishes other pro government media stories. They do op-eds and editorials that are also largely penned by government officials. And through this, we have seen both Ke Kol Sophea and her husband Touch Kongkea, who is the, the deputy director at the Military Intelligence Unit. Both of these individuals have been seen campaigning for the ruling Cambodian People’s Party. So, we know that they have this influential platform and it’s largely used to promote the government.

Mike (narration): Hey there. Thank you as always for tuning in and listening to the Mongabay Newscast we really appreciate it and all of your support. If you happen to be listening to us on a browser, or even if you aren’t. And you enjoy our work. I heartily encourage you to subscribe to the show, using your favorite podcast platform and leave a review. Doing both of these things helps us reach a wider audience. And it’s also the best way for you to stay up to date on our most recent episodes. And if you’re really enjoying Mongabay’s work, you can also subscribe to our newsletter, which is conveniently located in the upper right-hand corner of Mongabay’s landing page at mongabay.com. Thanks again. And now back to the conversation.

Mike: So, um, since all this has happened, since like the community members have reached out, I think a lot has transpired and former members of that forest community have since fled. They fled the area. Some of them have been arrested. Some are awaiting trial. What happened here? Can you give us some details about what has transpired to some community members?

Gerry: Yeah, a lot has happened since we began reporting on this story. And none of it good, really for the community. The leader of the community forest because the community forest has like an elected committee and in this particular case, they had the leader, and then two deputies, one who is focused on forestry, like a forestry expert, and the other who is focused on the ecotourism side of, of the community forest. Before we started reporting on the story, the community forest leader was arrested. He is still in pretrial detention, so he’s not had his day in court, there’s not been any trial yet. He’s already been in prison for several months as it stands and for context, I think it’s important to highlight the intensity of Cambodian prisons. Almost every single penal facility in the country is grossly overpopulated, often by, you know, more than 100 percent of its original occupancy capacity. So, these are, these are bad places to be. You often have hundreds of people in one cell. Food and water have to be purchased, which often has to be done by family members, so it, having a family member go to prison in Cambodia really puts an incredible strain on a lot of, a lot of people. So already one member of the community is in jail several fled Stung Treng province and spoke to us from undisclosed locations, while one of them Ouk Mao, is pretty defiant. He’s actually a journalist as well. And he has been kind of working pretty tirelessly to expose the damage done to the community forest by the mining company. And that is really what’s landed him in trouble because the company, Lin Vatey, they have issued legal threats against many members of the community, and that’s why some of these members have fled already but Mao decided to stay and has been continuously visiting the forest, taking photos trying to find ways to share that information and get it out to the world. But he will actually go on trial this week. He’s been summoned by the court. Um, He’s now facing charges of incitement, which carries up to two years in prison. But also, an increasingly worrying trend that we’re seeing here. He’s also being charged with clearing state land. We’ve seen this a few times now where forest defenders are being hit with charges linked to clearing forest. It’s very strange, I can’t fully explain it, but ultimately with the lack of independence in the courts and the level of political connections of the people that he’s up against, it’s very unlikely that he’ll be able to avoid prison. So, we’re gonna be keeping an eye on that one.

Mike: That is reallyy shocking and heartbreaking to hear. And definitely we want to know how this turns out. So, there were also some ecotourism efforts here that were supported by some really significant entities. Like, the United Nations Development Program and you and USAID. I believe that all the foreign employees and these entities have since been kicked out of this area. Is that correct? Can you, elucidate on that?

Gerry: Yeah, I mean the, the eco-tourism venture, that was actually wholly run by the community. I think with these sort of, these international organizations, they helped to set it up. So, they provided some money technical expertise. But they weren’t involved in the sort of the day-to-day management of it. And again, like, you can really see the potential in this place. You can understand exactly why these organizations wanted to try and support the community and help them build a more sustainable livelihood through ecotourism there, because it’s stunning. I mean, you’ve got these incredible limestone mountains. Carpeted in old growth forest and this forest just stretches on and on it’s absolutely beautiful and even more alluring is it was actually only about 45 minutes’ drive out from the Stung Treng provincial town, so it’s not even excessively remote or difficult to access and according to members of the community, to, you know, people living nearby, it had been a pretty successful venture. There’d been a lot of domestic tourists, quite a few international ones visiting and it does help alleviate pressure on the community to harvest things from the forest. You know, it basically, it, it reduces pressure on the forest by giving members of the community an alternative way of making a living. So, to see that shuttered and abandoned …I understand that In following the arrest of the community leader the authorities kind of raided his office in this ecotourism venture. So, this is why letter number 1456 was so hard to find and why we weren’t able to find it because the community leader apparently had a copy of it in his office, which along with the rest of the ecotourism venture was searched and, well, effectively, shut down. So now, there doesn’t seem to be any recourse for the community. Just seems to be the end of that chapter, and instead of a nice ecotourism offering, there’s now a marble mining company.

Mike: It does make me wonder, and this is not really a question. it’s just more of a thought, but it does make me wonder if the United Nations is aware of what is happening and whether or not they have an opinion or a thought on it. I personally would be curious to know.

Gerry: I yeah, I would also be curious to know their thoughts on this. I mean, I think one of the major stumbling blocks that a lot of these international organizations face when working in Cambodia is sort of, they are rarely given the opportunity to kind of provide much in the way of kind of critical insights. They’re able to operate here provided they work on the government’s terms, and the government’s terms quite routinely includes not criticizing them publicly. So, you know, we’ve, we’ve had this issue before when, you know, projects funded by or supported by international organizations have been affected by the actions of private companies or, or these Cambodian elites. And yeah, these international organizations typically stay silent because it’s safer to do so. I think you know, previously the government has actually forced out one of the UNDP’s staff over reports on poverty that came out I think in 2016. So, the government is not afraid to kick these people out if they start causing problems.

Mike: So, the Stung Treng Provincial Administration spokesperson communicated with you. And they at first seemed to deny completely the connections between Lin Vatey and the privatization of the land, but then they double backed and said that Lin Vatey’s occupation of the land was legal? Like how…how is that…like, how did that go? How is that possible? It seems quite contradictory. And then they also sort of denied that this forest was part of the 2017 agreement. It just seemed like a lot of contradictions in such a short interaction. Can you talk to us about that?

Gerry: Yeah, I mean I think to be a Cambodian government spokesperson Really requires some very strong mental gymnastics because on the one hand have to deny what is happening before your eyes. Often…and in this particular case, yeah, the answers that we got when speaking to this spokesperson they were nonsensical. It was a complete denial of all of the evidence that we had accrued over the course of reporting on this story. But sadly, that is often the case in Cambodia. I mean, I think it’s something to do with the structure of the government and the fact that really power is very much centralized at the top. And so, for someone in a provincial government to speak out or admit would definitely result in some consequences for that spokesperson. And so, realistically, I don’t think we ever expected to get an especially honest or logical answer out of out of this guy, but yeah, I mean, saying that there’s no connection between the company and the privatization of the land when the, you know, there very clearly is two members of the board are named in this letter requesting the land but then claiming that it’s all perfectly legal, I mean, to be fair, we can’t prove that it is illegal, but, I mean, at the end of the day, legal or otherwise, perfectly good forest is not going to be there after this mining company has done what they’ve come here to do and the idea that this isn’t part of the community forest is, is frankly ridiculous because I mean we have the maps. These are government issued maps, and so it’s a pretty bizarre claim. But again, as bizarre as it is that sadly kind of in line with what we expect sometimes speaking to Government officials on issues as sensitive as land grabbing, as deforestation, and mining.

Mike: Well, Gerry thank you so much for your hard work on this story. It looks like it was a huge undertaking and it’s certainly quite revealing.

Gerry: No problem. We’re got plenty more in the pipeline, so keep your eyes peeled.

Mike: Before you go. I did want to ask you about, you recently wrote about fisheries. What, was that about and what did you find in there?

Gerry: Yeah I mean, typically I’ve largely focused on forests in Cambodia. Not a lot of people here really cover fishing like, sort of, offshore fishing because it’s very difficult. It’s quite dangerous, or it can be and it’s pretty expensive to do, so there’s not a lot of information that we get from coastal fisheries but what we were hearing from speaking to various communities was that, you know, illegal trawlers were absolutely decimating the Cambodian fish stocks, and these are, you know, hugely important resources for hundreds of thousands of people along the coast. And so, we spent roughly a week out in two of Cambodia’s four coastal provinces two of the largest ones. And in that time, we had one late night pursuit of an illegal trawler on a speedboat with members of the community who were seeing their livelihoods being plundered by these trawlers just scraping all kinds of life out of the sea. We spoke to communities who were facing problems on land as well, not just on the water, the trawlers are stealing all of the fish, but on land, private companies are buying up almost the entirety of the coast, including a lot of islands, which are just being privatized outright and so you’ve got this kind of tragedy where these hundreds of thousands of people are just being squeezed between dwindling resources at sea and evaporating land at their homes. So, there seems to be no real solution in place to this. I mean, admittedly, the efforts that the government have made, which have, again, been supported in this case by, I think, like, the European Union, Food and Agriculture Organization, the UN various others. These efforts have done little to kind of stop what now looks like the imminent collapse of Cambodia’s fish stocks at sea.

Mike: That’s incredible. Thank you, Gerry, for the hard work that you’re doing. We really appreciate it.

Gerry: Always good to speak to you, Mike. Thank you very much.

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