Until last year, most Cambodians had lived under only one leader. Hun Sen ruled as prime minister for nearly four decades, tightening his iron grip over the country and systematically silencing the opposition, activists and independent media.
When Mr. Hun Sen appointed his oldest son, Hun Manet, as his successor, there was a sliver of optimism that civil liberties would improve. The new leader had attended universities in the United States and Britain, where he was exposed to a more liberal approach to elections and human rights.
But since he took power in August 2023, those hopes, however meager, have been dashed.
In recent months, the Cambodian authorities have locked up environmental activists on what critics say are trumped-up charges. They detained Mech Dara, a respected journalist, for nearly a month, in what was seen as an attack on press freedom. And they have cracked down on dissent from Cambodians overseas, securing deportations from Thailand and Malaysia.
“The space for expression has been at a low base, probably since 2014, and is shrinking further,” said Marc Thayre, the British deputy ambassador to Cambodia.
That sentiment was echoed by a United Nations official.
“We were hoping this next generation of government would be more liberal,” said Vitit Muntarbhorn, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Cambodia. “Now it looks as though there is no sign of liberalization at all.”
While Mr. Hun Manet has often spoken of the need for independent media and civil society in Cambodia, his government has moved in the opposite direction. His father, Mr. Hun Sen, also remains in the picture — as the head of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party and the nation’s Senate.
Last month, the European Parliament called for the “immediate end of repression and harassment of civil society and political prisoners in Cambodia,” adopting a resolution to review its trade agreements with the country.
It remains to be seen what the economic ramifications of the review will be. But the government is already dealing with a drop in funding from China, its staunchest ally. Beijing, which has lent billions of dollars for infrastructure projects in Cambodia, is now facing an economic slowdown at home.
“This economic pressure may indeed encourage the Cambodian government to become more open to working with activists and civil society groups,” said Ruos Sarat, who works on environmental issues for the Cambodian Center for Human Rights.
In July, 10 members of the environmental group Mother Nature Cambodia were charged with offenses included “plotting” against the government over protests they had organized. Half of them are now serving prison sentences of six to eight years.
Mother Nature was founded in 2012, with Cambodia in the midst of a huge infrastructure investment phase. The group has called out projects and practices — including dams, coastal construction and sand dredging — that it says disregard environmental regulations and unlawfully enrich developers and politicians. With in-person protests likely to lead to arrests, it is now focusing on online activism.
These young activists are putting out their message in short and shareable social media clips. They are finding traction on Facebook, which is immensely popular in Cambodia, where about two-thirds of the population is under 30.
Over the summer they were in action in Sihanoukville Province, roughly three hours southwest of Phnom Penh, the capital. Mean Lisa, one of the new leaders of Mother Nature, made a video about a river that was being polluted by a nearby palm oil factory. Between takes, she scrolled through the video script to rehearse. The screen illuminated the word “Khmer” tattooed across her index finger.
“It reminds me who I am doing this for,” said Ms. Mean Lisa, 22. “I am Khmer. Many Cambodians are Khmer. I work for my people.”
Less than a month after the video was posted, the factory was fined 40 million Cambodian riels, or nearly $10,000.
“It is hard to celebrate making a difference when our friends are still in jail,” Ms. Mean Lisa said. “I don’t know what will get them out. All we can do for now is make sure they are not forgotten.”
Demonstrators have also seemingly had other successes.
In August, dozens of people were arrested for criticizing a regional development plan between Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam that was pitched as a way to increase cross-border trade. They were concerned that Cambodia was giving land concessions to Vietnam, a neighbor with whom the country has a fraught history. A few weeks after the mass arrests, Mr. Hun Manet announced his country’s surprise withdrawal from the project.
Still, the flurry of arrests has made many observers wary.
“Asking for accountability, sooner or later, will get you in trouble in Cambodia because accountability is the enemy of corruption,” said Sophal Ear, a Cambodian-American political scientist who specializes in governance issues in Cambodia and whose family fled Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge takeover. “Accountability is the enemy of everything that is wrong in Cambodia.”
In October, Mr. Mech Dara, the journalist, who won awards for his work exposing scam compounds, was detained for three weeks in connection with social media posts that criticized various injustices in Cambodia.
In November, six activists — including Ouch Leng, a winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize — who were investigating logging inside a national park were detained on accusations of trespassing. Earlier that month, Koet Saray, who spoke out against the forced eviction of hundreds of people to make way for a rubber plantation, was sentenced to four years in prison.
“Activists no longer know what is acceptable and not acceptable,” said Mr. Thayre, the British diplomat. “That unpredictability is very dangerous.”
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