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Ly Chandaravuth campaigns for environmental protection in Cambodia.
In 2021 he had to go to prison for five months because of the accusation: incitement and lese majeste
Photo: Thomas Cristofoletti / DER SPIEGEL
SPIEGEL
: Mr. Ly Chandaravuth, you use evocative videos to draw attention to the massive environmental destruction in Cambodia.
What makes you so angry?
Ly Chandaravuth:
Cambodia is a country full of valuable resources.
But nobody protects them, the government exploits them, a sell-off with no thought for sustainability.
Wild animals are traded illegally.
Forests are illegally cleared.
Cambodia has one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world.
More than 60 percent of the country's forest has been cleared since 2011.
Within just ten years!
Entire cities are rebuilt, coastlines are changed.
Everything is not transparent.
Nobody is informed, especially not the public.
SPIEGEL
: Let's talk about sand extraction from the Mekong River.
What happens there?
Chandaravuth:
Hun Sen's government removes sand from the Mekong;
it pumps the sand to a zone outside the capital Phnom Penh to dry out lakes there.
New districts and huge new construction projects are to be created there.
The consequences are serious: the water level in the Mekong is falling due to the extraction of the subsoil.
Which means seawater is pushing in from the estuary into the river.
This kills freshwater fish.
The residues of the machines that dredge the soil are harmful to plants and animals;
Green plants on the shore are dying.
The fish population is shrinking.
This in turn is a problem for people's nutrition.
One of the staple foods of Cambodians is fish.
If it becomes scarce, it becomes more expensive - too expensive for many.
SPIEGEL
: The project in Phnom Penh is now well advanced, large parts of what used to be wet areas have become wasteland.
Cambodia as a whole has lost half of its wetlands in the past 15 years.
Chandaravuth:
It's an irreversible process.
15 out of 25 lakes around Phnom Penh have already been filled in and drained;
the city now lacks the natural retention basins and reservoirs for the water masses in the rainy season.
Where should the water go in the future?
It's already building up way too high in some parts of the city.
The lakes were also like a natural sewage treatment plant for Phnom Penh's sewage.
And many people lived from what the lakes gave: from the fish, vegetables and herbs that grow in them and can be sold on the market.
SPIEGEL
: Why is construction still continuing?
Chandaravuth:
Because the government believes that this is the way development works.
Shopping malls, concrete buildings, paved land.
Foreign investors, especially from China, invest their money in Phnom Penh and build buildings that often end up empty.
Nobody thinks about the people who live here, about the water, the environment.
These projects exacerbate the inequality between rich and poor.
MIRROR:
To what extent?
Chandaravuth:
Who should be able to afford the apartments that are currently being built?
Who needs three shopping malls next to each other?
Certainly not the people who have to make room for these mega projects.
The flooding also hits the poorer quarters first.
They can't move that easily.
You are delivered.
SPIEGEL
: You are trying to take countermeasures with your group Mother Nature.
What do you do?
Chandaravuth:
Many independent media outlets have been shut down in Cambodia, journalists and activists are being suppressed and intimidated.
There is simply a lack of coverage of what is going on outside of the government-influenced newspapers.
In our posts and videos, we try to incorporate some of this enlightenment.
SPIEGEL
: Who is your audience?
Chandaravuth:
Young people in particular.
The videos are clicked and shared tens of thousands of times, some more than a million times.
Many are appalled to see their country being ruined.
Write to us, support us and share the videos on Facebook.
That alone makes us enemies of the government: we are harassed, intimidated, threatened.
Our social media channels paralyzed.
SPIEGEL
: You and your comrades-in-arms were arrested for the videos and spent months in prison.
Chandaravuth:
I wanted to take a water sample from the Tonle Sap River in Phnom Penh in front of the camera.
The water had been smelling unbelievably for days.
We do that sometimes: send samples from the river to a laboratory to show how the water quality is deteriorating.
I had just got the bottle out of the river when plainclothes officers came and arrested me.
SPIEGEL
: On what grounds?
Chandaravuth:
You accuse me and other activists of incitement to overthrow the government and lese majeste.
I was shocked at first, I have to admit.
But then I made arrangements.
It's what happens to people in Cambodia who freely speak their minds.
I'm on probation, which means, for example, that I can't leave the country unless I ask the government for permission.
SPIEGEL
: How big is environmental awareness in Cambodia?
Chandaravuth:
I notice that people in Europe often cannot understand why societies that feel climate change and environmental destruction so clearly and every day are so uninterested in it.
But you have to imagine: the state repression and the distortion of reality are powerful in Cambodia.
Many are afraid to criticize.
You see what happens to those who dare.
You grew up in a country that suffered cruel wars and trauma;
this violence is not long ago is in people's minds.
They know full well that the powerful are capable of anything.
It's better to be quiet then.
And what we should not forget: people have become poorer in the pandemic.
They lost jobs.
They often have no safety net.
They have other, more direct problems.
SPIEGEL
: What would have to change?
Chandaravuth:
The government.
Nothing will change as long as those who are remain in power.
In a dictatorship there is no change.
I'm not optimistic about the future.
We continue anyway.
Maybe one day everyone will get up together, maybe that day will come.
For me, silence is not an option.
We have to be loud.
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