Five Cambodian environmental activists who have completed one year of their six to eight-year prison terms on baseless charges should be immediately and unconditionally released, Human Rights Watch said today.
On July 2, 2024, the Phnom Penh Court found 10 activists from the youth-led environmental group Mother Nature guilty of "plotting against the government" and "insulting the king," charges stemming from their peaceful environmental activism. Five were immediately imprisoned, while four others were tried in absentia. The tenth, a Spanish national, had been deported in 2015.
"The baseless and harsh sentences imposed on the Mother Nature activists one year ago demonstrate the Cambodian government's utter disregard for the country's environment," said Bryony Lau, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "The government should quash these convictions for peaceful environmental activism and release those imprisoned immediately."
The authorities sent the five activists to separate prisons across the country - hundreds of kilometers from their families - which a Cambodian rights organization called cruel and unprecedented. On April 30, 2025, Cambodia's Supreme Court denied the activists' final bail request, upholding the Phnom Penh Court of Appeal's initial denial of bail on February 17 and their conviction.
The imprisoned activists are Thun Ratha in Tbong Khmum, Ly Chandaravuth in Kandal, Phuon Keoraksmey in Pursat, Yim Leanghy in Kampong Speu, and Long Kunthea in Preah Vihear. The separation severely limits family visits, medical care, and access to legal assistance, posing serious risks to the activists' well-being and due process rights.
For over a decade, Mother Nature has exposed corruption in natural resource management in Cambodia, opposed destructive infrastructure projects, and mobilized youth to defend the country's biodiversity - one of the world's most threatened due to high rates of deforestation and wildlife trafficking. Mother Nature's successes include halting a Chinese-led dam, threatening an Indigenous community, and ending corrupt sand exports from Koh Kong island.
In 2023, the group received the Right Livelihood Award for its "fearless and engaging activism." Right Livelihood raised the imprisonment of Mother Nature activists at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), and called the arrests and sentencing "unprecedented … unjust and arbitrary."
Cambodian authorities have often charged human rights activists with incitement, which is punishable by up to two years in prison. In 2021, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Cambodia expressed concern that "human rights defenders are currently in detention facing charges for incitement to commit felony." The Mother Nature activists were the first environmental activists to be charged with conspiracy, which carries a longer sentence, of up to 10 years. Based on their current sentences, Chandaravuth, Keorasmey, Kunthea, and Ratha will be in prison until 2030; Leanghy until 2032.
Since the Mother Nature convictions, Cambodian authorities have also targeted environmental journalists for their reporting.
On January 4, Gerald Flynn, a British environmental journalist, was barred from re-entering Cambodia in apparent retaliation for his reporting. When he arrived in Siem Reap from abroad, immigration authorities told Flynn that his visa extension was "fake," although he had been able to travel freely in and out of Cambodia on the same documents in November 2024. The authorities informed Flynn, one of the few remaining foreign journalists based in the country, that he had been banned from re-entering Cambodia indefinitely. Flynn had investigated illegal logging networks across Cambodia and appeared in a France24 video documentary that the Ministry of Environment publicly labelled "fake news."
On May 16, three plainclothes officers in an unmarked vehicle arrested and handcuffed a Cambodian environmental journalist, Ouk Mao, without a warrant near his home in Stung Treng, his wife told media outlet, Mongabay. Military police had previously questioned him over his investigation into land clearing in a Stung Treng community forest in June 2024.
Between that incident and his arrest in May, he continued reporting on deforestation. He was also featured in Mongabay's report on the physical attacks and arbitrary prosecutions against him and a widely viewed interview with Radio France International's Khmer service.
Mao was released on bail on May 25 after spending nine days in pretrial detention but continues to face several serious charges stemming from both his environmental reporting and public commentary.
On May 27, the UN special rapporteur for human rights defenders posted a comment about Ouk Mao that the "judicial & physical harassment of [environmental human rights defenders] exposing illegal logging & deforestation in Cambodia must end now."
"The Cambodian government's targeting of environmental activists and journalists is disastrous," Lau said. "Imprisoning, deporting, or forcing into hiding those still willing to risk their lives and livelihoods to protect Cambodia's environment can only lead to long-term harm for Cambodia's people."
