It was 2013 and I was swimming down a peaceful river in the Areng Valley in Cambodia, where many Siamese crocodiles live. Further down the river young activists, who had earlier that year been shot at by the police during political protests, filmed me as I talked in Khmer about the natural beauty of the area — and all that stood to be lost by building a hydropower dam there.
Days later this video went viral in the country and kick-started our campaign to save the Areng Valley from destruction. At this point there was little environmental activism in Cambodia.
Prominent anti-logging activist Chut Wutty had been murdered one year earlier and the big international environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were really inactive. Brave, effective civil society in Cambodia was either dead, in jail or did not dare move.
Our organization, Mother Nature, was born out of desperation. I had been working as an interpreter and human rights monitor in Cambodian prisons and had no experience of forestry or activism, but I became interested in human rights violations in the country and how they interlinked with the state-sponsored pillage of the country’s natural resources.
And then I heard about the plan to build a dam right through the majestic Areng Valley, part of the Central Cardamom mountains, one of southeast Asia’s largest and most incredible forests. To destroy an area home to over 30 rare species of wildlife and to forcibly displace one of Cambodia’s oldest ethnic groups, the Chong, seemed criminal. Even more so as the project had already been rejected twice by Chinese energy companies for not being “economically feasible.”
My friend and I started going from house to house in the Areng Valley area and telling people what their rights were.
People had been lied to — they were told they had no choice but to leave their homes. Those who wanted to stay could, but their houses and ancestral lands would be flooded and they would drown.
We started making more videos and putting them on Facebook. Even locals who did not have Internet at home were somehow finding the videos and interest started picking up among people from all walks of life across the country.
A few months later we were able to see what this growing body of resistance could achieve when the government decided to send in engineers to do studies on the feasibility of the dam. For many locals the area is deeply sacred, and full of spirits, so the engineers’ presence was going to be like a “virus” infecting the body of the forest.
So, around 250 locals and activists from other parts of the country got together and we started a road block, aimed at stopping Sinohydro — one of the world’s largest hydro-dam companies — from entering the valley.
The few engineers who had managed to sneak in the night before disguised as tourists, found themselves surrounded by locals, who simply picked up their equipment and walked it out of the valley.
On one particularly memorable occasion, a group of old ladies, who were from a different area and just visiting for a religious ceremony, actually chased the engineers out of the forest, blaming them for wanting to destroy the nation’s last major forest.
Before then I thought we were going to lose the battle; after that I felt like we had the entire nation behind us.
We knew that our strategy of resistance had to be peaceful, innovative and direct to be effective — we have learned from experience that nothing else works in Cambodia, not engaging the media nor writing to parliament.
Young people from across the country started to come to the valley as tourists and visitors — that was really important, to have people be witness to the crimes.
Another tactic was to invite monks in to the area to do tree blessing ceremonies. I had been inspired by seeing this happen in Thailand — the monks arrive, ordain the trees and declare the trees to be monks. The idea of cutting down these trees then becomes really shocking, almost sinful. We managed to ordain over 100 of these huge trees — some 14m in diameter — and attracted wide media attention.
The campaign was ultimately successful — the plans for the dam have been stalled and we have now directed our attention to a new campaign to prevent illegal sand-dredging along the awesome mangrove forests of the coastal province of Koh Kong.
However, environmental activism is still a roller coaster in Cambodia and full of dangers. Currently four of our 10-strong team are in jail, after being arrested for their inspirational and effective activism. I am currently in Spain — away from Cambodia, which I have come to consider my home.
After 13 years living in the country, the Cambodian government refused to renew my visa in February and has forcibly removed me from the country.
What will happen next is unclear, for me and for our movement, but what is certain is that the seeds of a true environmental movement have been planted in Cambodia.
The people who have been committing environmental crimes for years have been sent a powerful message; local people will not be cheated anymore, they are ready to peacefully, and effectively, resist.
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