[Vietnamization: Logging] 'I could be arrested or killed': the activists fighting to save Cambodia's forests

In the 12 years to 2013, Cambodia had the world’s highest deforestation rate. Photograph: David Longstreath/AP

'I could be arrested or killed': the activists fighting to save Cambodia's forests 

Timber tycoons are collaborating with Cambodian officials to strip Prey Lang forest. John Vidal meets the activists risking their lives to stop deforestation

The Guardian | 16 February 2017

WATCH VIDEO: The fight to save Cambodia’s forests. 

Leng Ouch won the world’s leading environmental prize for his activism. Photograph: Max Duncan

Satellite image showing deforestation in Cambodia. Photograph: NASA'S Earth Observatory

People march to the killing site of Cambodian anti-logging activist Chut Wutty in Koh Kong province in 2012. Photograph: Alamy

We crouch in a shallow trench deep in Cambodia’s Prey Lang forest. The flies bite and we face walls of fallen trees. Fifty yards away a tall fence surrounds a secret logging camp which forestry investigator Leng Ouch has identified with a drone.

Armed guards bar entry to the camp, which Leng says is owned by a relation of a prominent member of government; so he follows the fence until he finds a gap. Slipping into the large timber yard, he darts from one large stack of logs to another, dodging behind idle bulldozers, log stackers, trucks, tractors and a sawmill. He photographs each pile to record numbers, tree sizes and species.

And then an alarm goes off. Has Leng been caught? If so, he is certain to be beaten up, and probably imprisoned. The consequences of his being found are dire. The forestry industry and some government officials have made Cambodia’s leading forestry corruption investigator a wanted man.

We text him from the ditch, but there is no response.

One hour later and we are increasingly certain that Leng has been detained. We leave the ditch fearful of what may have happened and approach the main gate, hoping to meet the head of the camp to plead on his behalf.

But then Leng appears behind us. He had escaped the camp by crawling out of the forest and hiding deep in a swamp until he thought they had stopped looking for him.

For Leng, a lawyer who set up the Cambodian human rights taskforce, defending what remains of the vast Prey Lang forest is a fraught mission in a dangerous country. For years now, he has meticulously documented and exposed how powerful timber tycoons have colluded with senior politicians and the Cambodian officials to systematically strip Prey Lang, using agribusiness and mining as a cover. As a direct result of his and others’ work, the government has been forced to crack down on corruption and illegal logging.

To get the information needed to expose the collusion between timber companies and powerful politicians he has posed as a labourer, a timber dealer, a driver, a tourist, and even as a cook. The human rights defender has uncovered land grabbing by Chinese and western corporations, illegal logging operations conducted by Cambodia’s biggest timber magnates, smuggling of precious wood, and widespread corruption within the national and local authorities.

It is dangerous work. His friend and colleague Chut Wutty was killed investigating an illegal logging site in the Cardamom mountains of south-west Cambodia in 2013. Since then, forest activist Phan Sopheak, 25, was hacked as she slept, and others have been killed as they try to investigate a corrupt trade. 

“I know that my life and even my family is at risk. I could be criminally charged and arrested or get killed, [but] I still try to save the forest,” Leng says.

Leng has witnessed the rape of Cambodia’s forests in just a few decades. Satellite images show how dozens of huge “economic land concessions” handed out in the early 2000s have dissected south-east Asia’s largest lowland forest. In the 12 years to 2013 Cambodia had the world’s highest deforestation rate, in that time losing 1.5m hectares of forest to logging and land clearance, making it one of the countries with the highest deforestation rate in the world.

But it is a human rights as well as an ecological tragedy, with implications for climate change, flooding and wildlife, he says. Around 350,000 people live in the greater Prey Lang area, and most depend on the forest for a living. As well as precious rosewood and other luxury timber, the logging companies have targeted hundreds of thousands of resin trees which communities traditionally tap for sealants and the perfume industry.

“The timber is being stolen from people who have looked after it for years. The forest is decreasing day by day,” says Leng, who last year was awarded a Goldman prize – or “green Oscar” – for his defence of Cambodia’s forests.

“The government and high-ranking officers are destroying it completely,” he wrote to the Guardian recently. “I am surrounded by armed forces. I am incapable to protect the forest alone. I was shocked when I saw the big trees being cut down. Almost of all protected forest are being destroyed when high ranking and powerful people are embroiled with timber business.

“Timber business is a mafia business. They don’t care about the law, environment or livelihood of people. They bribe government officials for permission to cut and transport the timbers to Vietnam and China.” 

He and other forest activists argue that the US, EU and other donor countries do not seek to stop the deforestation, offering instead only token support for community groups to monitor and apprehend illegal loggers.

“The main problem is the US, EU and other donors dare not urge government to stop sawmill operations. Some donors just waste money and never do anything against the sawmills,” he says.

Stung by international criticism and mounting grassroots opposition, the Cambodian government last year set up new conservation areas in Prey Lang, theoretically protecting a further 300,000 hectares of the forest. In addition, a national anti-deforestation “crackdown” committee led by a military police general was equipped with machine guns, helicopters and rocket launchers to stop illegal logging.

Leng dismisses the initiative as toothless. “The crackdown commission group went for several days into the Prey Lang forest [but] the security guards of the sawmills did not allow them to go inside. It showed that the government has no commitment to raid sawmills,” he says.

Indeed, the number of illegal logging sites found by communities in the forest continues to grow, he says. “No one dares to fight against sawmill operating there, some sawmills paused for short time during the crackdown mission ordered by prime minister in early 2016 but they have now started to cut all species of tree again. Some huge sawmills owned by powerful and influential people are still operating and government does nothing against them.”

Instead, it is left to grassroots groups and communities to police their forest. Under the banner of the Prey Lang community network, hundreds of young people using motorbikes, smart phones and cameras regularly patrol the dirt tracks near their villages to look for loggers. If they find them, they seize the sawn wood, and confiscate chainsaws and logging machinery.

With a dozen young volunteer forest monitors, we take to the motorbikes, following forest tracks, crossing makeshift bridges and flooded fields. In a village on the southern edge the forest we meet leaders who told Leng how a company had moved into their area three years ago.

“They have taken our farmland, our resin trees have gone, they have destroyed a temple and filled in lakes,” says Meas Mon, a village leader. “Life is much harder now. There was no consultation by the company or by government. Our land was just grabbed,” she says.

“We have uncovered more than 2,000 cases of forestry crime so far this year. They took about 20,000 hectares. They cut down the rosewood and other valuable trees. We complained to the authorities and the police but nothing changed. So we started a people’s movement. 

“Now we patrol every week. Last month we confiscated about 250 planks of valuable wood, worth at least $20,000 (£16,000) and 49 chainsaws. Last year we captured two bulldozers used by loggers to get into the forest,” says Kuoy Lutsang. “The company can have its bulldozers back when we get our land back.”

Three things are needed to stop the deforestation, says Leng. “It needs the EU and US to urge the Cambodian government to shut down all the sawmills. In addition the EU must stop its proposed voluntary partnership agreement with neighbouring Vietnam – which will allow it to export timber to Europe.

“The agreement is supposed to ensure Vietnam exports only legally-felled wood, but Leng says it offers little protection for Prey Lang. “I have found that Vietnam imports illegally felled timber from Cambodia. The EU always talks about climate change and the environment but why does it allow timber to be bought from Vietnam?”

The future is uncertain for both Leng and the once-mighty Prey Lang forest. Unless the EU and US combine to put pressure on the Cambodian government and its cronies, the trees will continue to fall, and the human cost will mount.