Activists Unconscious After Inspection of Dam

Two Cambodian activists suspect that they were poisoned by river water at the border of southern Laos’s Champasak province and northern Cambodia’s Stung Treng province, after both fell unconscious during detainment by Lao authorities on Monday. Medical examiners working for local NGO Licadho who examined the brothers after their return to Phnom Penh, however, blamed their mysterious sickness on exhaustion.

Environmentalists Chum Hout and Chum Hour were sent to Calmette hospital in Phnom Penh on Monday evening after falling unconscious in a Lao police station. They were arrested while examining the construction of the hydropower Don Sahong Dam on the Mekong River just two kilometers upstream from the Cambodian border.

Mr. Hout said, “We were awake Tuesday morning,” before the hospital’s medical staff asked him and his brother to leave. The staff allegedly did not give either brother diagnoses.

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