Mother Nature is a group made up of young activists attempting to protect Cambodia’s environment from widespread destruction. But the group has increasingly been targeted, with some even jailed for their activism.
Thon Ratha and Long Kunthea are passionate, young environmental activists for Mother Nature. They also both spent more than a year in jail in appalling conditions for daring to take on their Government.
Ratha - now one of the group’s best-known activists, was a student working at a supermarket to make ends meet when in 2014 he attended a workshop at his university in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. It would change his life forever.
The event was led by Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson, the Spanish co-founder of the Mother Nature environmental group.
Gonzalez-Davidson, who is fluent in Cambodia’s native Khmer, spoke passionately about a planned hydropower dam in the Cardamom Mountains in the west of the country, and the destruction it would inflict on the local environment.
Inspired, Ratha decided to join the group as an activist. He soon started conducting investigations for Mother Nature on sand mining, the illegal trafficking of wildlife parts and the effects of mass construction in the coastal city of Sihanoukville.
Long Kunthea, 24, was inspired to join the group upon watching one of Ratha’s videos in 2017. Before that she showed little interest in politics and the environment. “I was terrified… like ordinary Cambodian people,” she says. “I would not dare to even click on political articles.”
In the video, Ratha and other activists delivered their findings while covered up to their necks in sand. Kunthea was captivated by the entertaining but hard-hitting video. She wasn’t the only one. That video alone racked up more than 4.5 million views and 150,000 shares on Facebook. -BBC