Human Rights Watch accused the government of “attempting to silence criticism.”
A Cambodian court has found a group of environmental activists guilty of conspiring against the government and insulting the King.
Ten activists from the environmental group Mother Nature were sentenced to between six and eight years in prison on Monday, in a case that human rights NGOs say is aimed at “silencing criticism of government policies.”
The allegations relate to Mother Nature’s work between 2012 and 2021 documenting alleged pollution of the Tonle Sap River, which flows into Southeast Asia’s largest freshwater lake and is a major fishing base.
The group also raised issues surrounding the filling up of Phnom Penh’s lakes, illegal logging and the destruction of natural resources across the country.
The additional charge of insulting the king against the three activists centres on the leaking of an internal Zoom meeting about political cartoons.
Four of the defendants were arrested by police outside the court after the verdict, AFP reported.
Six others were convicted in absentia, including Mother Nature co-founder Alejandro Gonzalez Davidson, a Spanish national who was deported from Cambodia almost a decade ago.
‘Inhumane and cruel’
The jailing of the activists comes amid growing concerns about freedom of expression in Cambodia under Prime Minister Hun Manet, who took power last year after decades of rule by his father Hun Sen.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) last month denounced the trial as an attempt to “silence criticism of government policies.”
“This regime is not only out of touch with reality, it has shown us how inhumane and cruel it can be to those who dare stand up for justice,” Gonzalez-Davidson told Reuters.
The government has previously denied that the trial was politically motivated and said it was not prosecuting critics, only those who committed crimes.
The dispute over whether to protect or develop Cambodia’s natural resources has long been a contentious issue in the country, with environmentalists being threatened, arrested and even killed over the past decade.
Three of the activists convicted on Tuesday had previously been jailed for organising peaceful demonstrations against the filling in of a lake in the capital to make way for property development.
Between 2001 and 2015, a third of Cambodia’s primary forests — some of the world’s most biodiverse and a key carbon sink — were cut down, and tree cover loss accelerated at a faster rate than anywhere else in the world, according to the World Resources Institute.
Much of the cleared land has been handed over to companies, which experts say is contributing to deforestation and land grabbing in the country.
