Cambodia has jailed 10 environmental activists who had sounded the alarm on river pollution for plotting against the government – a case critics have decried as politically motivated.
Members of the group Mother Nature were charged in 2021 after they documented waste run-off into Phnom Penh’s Tonle Sap river, near the royal palace.
Three of them, including Spanish co-founder Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson, who were also convicted of insulting the king, were sentenced to eight years’ jail and fined $2,500 (£1,980). The seven others were handed six-year terms.
Prosecutors have never explained how the activists had violated the law against insulting the king or conspiring against the government.
Since its founding in 2013, Mother Nature has campaigned against environmentally destructive projects and raised questions on how natural resources are managed in the South East Asian country.
They document their findings in playful and informative videos that they post on Facebook, where they have 457,000 followers.
Environmental groups have long accused Cambodia’s leaders of profiting from the country’s natural resources. The government denies this and says Mother Nature is encouraging social unrest.
Gonzalez-Davidson, who was earlier banned from entering Cambodia, called the verdict a “disastrous decision by the Hun family regime”.
“No one benefits from [it], let alone the government. As we have seen with previous cases like this, this tends to send people into shock for a while, but ultimately backfires because it inspires many others to take [the jailed activists’] place,” he told the BBC.
