Mother Nature Cambodia is one of the country's leading civil society groups, working since 2012 with frontline human rights activists to protect Cambodia's environment.
Our main mission is to assist and work alongside those Cambodians willing to take risks. Our main work focuses on exposing to large audiences the excesses, environmental destruction, and human rights abuses that all-too-often are linked to the out-of-control development the country has been seeing for over two decades.
Despite being subjected to arbitrary harassment on a regular basis, we continue to strive forward, informing millions of Cambodians of what is truly happening in the name of so-called development.
Support us in protecting Cambodia's natural heritage.
This report highlights the disproportionate escalation of judicial penalties applied to activists of Mother Nature Cambodia (MNC) through a compliant legal system that is neither independent nor impartial, and exists to accommodate the whims of the government. The apparent goal of this escalation is to keep the views of young Cambodians out of the public discourse, thereby minimising the exposure of governmental and corporate corruption.
It is worth noting the Hun Sen regime’s continual and intentional abuse of the word ‘peace’ to describe what is essentially, ‘the freedom for government and corporate interests to commit acts of environmental destruction for financial benefit without criticism, protest or accountability’. Imposing excessively harsh prison sentences has become part of the process in achieving this definition of ‘peace’.
It is important to put the harsh prison sentences into perspective. Living conditions in Cambodian prisons are considerably worse than in Western prisons. Overcrowding (e.g. 30 to 40 people in a cell designed for 10), poor hygiene, lack of essential resources (including water), and the bribery of prison guards for basic needs, are all considered normal. Long prison sentences have a crippling financial
impact on the families and communities of the convicted, thereby increasing the pressure on the convicted to refrain from any further activism after being released from prison – furthering the Hun family regime’s advancement to their notion of ‘peace’.
The abusive police treatment, psychological torture, excessive sentencing and long imprisonments described within this document also serve as a deterrent to others who have critical views of the Hun family regime.
The following provides a chronological outline of the escalation, along with contexts and accompanying perspectives…
No sewage, no garbage, no casinos, no out-of-control construction, and no economic land concessions. Instead, here you will find an island paradise of unparalleled beauty.
We take pride in seeing how such a stunning place, bestowed upon us by our Khmer ancestors, still exists.
We demand that this mysterious and jungle-clad island - the country's largest - is declared officially protected and that it remains fully preserved IN ITS CURRENT STATE for future generations of Cambodians.
Our first campaign, and perhaps our most successful so far. Plans by the Phnom Penh government to flood this stunning part of the Cardamom mountains into a reservoir for an unproductive hydro-dam were stopped on its track after years of campaigning. The dam would have obliterated one of Cambodia's most important habitats for several species of wildlife - of which we highlight the extremely rare Siamese crocodile and Dragon Fish - and thrown close to 2,000 indigenous villagers out of their ancestral lands. Despite the dam having been officially cancelled, the threats to this stunning terrain persist.
For years, government agencies aided and abetted the extraction and smuggling of millions of tons of marine sand from Koh Kong's estuaries to several countries, chiefly Singapore, under the ridiculous pretext that 'estuaries need to be deepened for navigational purposes', or that it reduces 'riverbank collapse'. After years of grassroots advocacy and a hard hitting expose on wide-scale fraud by our group, exports of marine sand have stopped since late 2016. Sadly, the extraction of river sand around Phnom Penh, which is causing widespread river bank collapses, and the secretive export of silica sand, continue unabated.
Cambodia: Conviction of youth activists a further blow to Cambodia’s environmental movement (Amnesty International)
Our campaign videos consistently attract huge audiences, and get results. Videos consistently go viral, reaching hundreds of thousands - sometimes even millions - of Cambodians. Much anticipated, our video reports are talked about in homes and workplaces throughout the country. MNC’s social media team, made up entirely of young Cambodians, gets the message across in ways that connect with the Cambodian public.
There is no secret to our popular formula. We merely provide reliable content, which Cambodian people have been increasingly denied by the ruling-regime. It has systematically shut down, and sent into exile, most independent media sources in the country, leaving little behind but fake-news, which tows the party line.
Our brave campaign activist reporters refuse to be silenced. They have endured harassment, oppression, and even imprisonment. Their courage is leading by example.
We provide what the Cambodian people crave: truthful, evidence-based reports, that expose negligence and corruption, by Cambodia’s rich and powerful, on environmental issues.
Results are mounting, as time and again our videos hit home, highlighting issues that cannot be ignored. The mass social-media attention we attract gives the mainstream media stories it feels compelled to report. This builds momentum around the burning environmental and human-rights issues we seek to address. Political pressure applied to the ruling-regime, and especially to the individuals in our spotlight, has repeatedly led to changes in behaviour and policies. This has not gone unnoticed by our growing audience, hungry for political change, after decades of corrupt rule.
To name but a few of the successes some of our short but hard-hitting videos have achieved over the last few years: We have forced the Hun Sen regime cancel plans for a large (non-productive) hydro dam in the country's largest forest, put an end to fraudulent and destructive extraction and exportation of marine sand, pushed the government to put an end to widespread sumping of sewage water into pristine beaches, and a large etc.
Fantastic provincial administration! Once again, they choose to turn a blind eye and remain silent, as usual. This will not resolve the issues, nor will it address their responsibility for transforming a protected area into a landfill. Meanwhile, they have been treating the wildlife corridor as a dumping ground, continuously expanding this trash site over the past three years. What an egregiously intentional act! This mismanagement of waste is bound to harm both human and animal health and further devastate our already shrinking biodiversity. Therefore, we must ask: How exactly will the Koh Kong Provincial Administration be held accountable for the consequences of their ill-conceived decision to establish this dump?
It has been five months since the Cambodian courts arrested and imprisoned activists from the Mother Nature movement under anarchy. After five months of brutal arrests, have the environment and natural resources been better protected, or are they worsening and facing increasing criminalization? Local and international human rights defenders are calling for their release. When will the Cambodian courts and Government awaken to their responsibility and safeguard human rights?
Mother Nature Cambodia is a movement devoted to the protection of Cambodia's most precious asset: our nation's natural resources.
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