Wife Mourns Ratanakiri Environmentalist’s Imprisonment

Sitting alone in a small wooden house, Kham Salong, 37, says she has struggled without her husband, but still fully supports the environmental work he pursued that landed him in jail.

Chhorn Phalla became one of Cambodia’s prominent forest defenders, fronting a press conference two years ago about local authorities’ alleged complicity in illegal deforestation, violence against him at a public forum, and having a shelter burned down on his plantation. He filed a lawsuit against 16 people in his commune, including his commune chief, deputy village chief, a police officer, farmers and wood traders, over the allegations.

But he was the one who ended up imprisoned, first sentenced in November to five years for illegally clearing land. That conviction was overturned by the Appeal Court last month, but he remains in jail after the Ratanakiri Provincial Court issued a separate verdict just a week before the appeal decision.

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