It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, July 06, 2024
Drones, satellites and helicopters: China battles Dongting dike breach
China1
06-Jul-2024 Gong Zhe An aerial photo of the breached dike, Huarong County, central China's Hunan Province, July 6, 2024. /CFP
China is deploying advanced technology to combat the Dongting Lake dike breach. Drones, satellites and helicopters were deployed on Saturday to gain control of the situation.
Over 1,400 personnel from the National Comprehensive Fire and Rescue Team have rushed to the forefront, according to state flood and emergency response coordinators. While primarily a firefighting force, the team is also trained and equipped for other emergencies, like floods.
The China National Engineering and Construction Corporation, also known as China Anneng, dispatched an additional 350 rescuers and 98 pieces of critical equipment.
To maintain the communication network, state rescue authorities deployed two compound-wing drones to Huarong County, the region most affected by the breach.
Anneng is also leveraging satellites to map the area and monitor the situation.
Additionally, an Mi-171 and an H125 helicopter have arrived at the scene and are preparing for tasks like aerial reconnaissance and transportation.
On the water, the "Changsha" emergency response ship is also helping with pile driving to reinforce the breached area and stone placement to mitigate further erosion.
'Jewel Thief' Bolsonaro among 12 indicted for alleged embezzlement in Brazil
Common Dreams July 6, 2024 Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro AFP
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's legal woes increased dramatically Thursday as he and 11 others were indicted for embezzlement and other crimes in connection with the alleged misappropriation of diamond jewelry and other state property received as gifts from the Saudi and Bahraini monarchies during the right-wing leader's presidential tenure.
Carta Capital reported that Brazil's Federal Police indicted Bolsonaro with embezzlement, money laundering, and criminal association. If convicted on all counts, he faces up to 25 years in prison. Bolsonaro maintains his innocence.
Eleven other people were also indicted in the case, including former Mines and Energy Minister Bento Albuquerque and former Bolsonaro personal aide Lt. Col. Mauro Cid. The office of Brazilian Attorney General Jorge Messias must now decide whether to proceed with a federal case against the indicted individuals.
According to authorities, Bolsonaro failed to properly register high-value gifts from the Saudi and Bahraini governments near the end of his presidential term. Those items were later sold in the United States by the president's associates.
While visiting Saudi Arabia in October 2019, the Saudi monarchy gifted Bolsonaro a white gold kit containing a diamond-encrusted Rolex watch. This and another luxury Swiss watch—a Patek Philippe—were later allegedly sold in a mall in Pennsylvania.
This diamond-encrusted Rolex watch (left) is part of the white gold kit (right) that was allegedly sold by Bolsonaro associates in the United States. (Photo: Brazilian Federal Police)
On an October 2021 trip to Saudi Arabia, Albuquerque received a gold rosé kit with a watch, cuff links, pen, ring, and an Islamic rosary made by Chopard and failed to properly report the gift upon returning to Brazil. Investigators say the kit was then taken aboard an official flight on which Bolsonaro was a passenger and subsequently sold at a New York auction.
Proceeds from the sale of the undeclared goods—which investigators say totaled more than $1 million—were pocketed by the indicted individuals.
Army Gen. Mauro Lourena Cid—the father of Lt. Col. Mauro Cid, Bolsonaro's personal aide—allegedly kept some jewelry and sculptures received by Bolsonaro at the end of the Arab-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce Business Seminar in Manama, Bahrain in November 2021
. This photo shows some of the diamond jewelry cited in the Brazilian Federal Police indictment of former President Jair Bolsonaro and 11 others.(Photo: Brazilian Federal Police)
Police recommended criminally charging the younger Cid, who signed a plea deal. Cid's lawyer claimed his client was following orders from Bolsonaro—an allegation the ex-president denies.
O Globoreported Bolsonaro allegedly stored 175 boxes containing numerous gifts at a property owned by former Formula One racer Nelson Piquet. While some of the gifts were determined to be the president's rightful property, other items given to Bolsonaro while he served in his official presidential capacity are legally owned by the state.
This is the second set of federal criminal charges for Bolsonaro, who in March was federally charged with allegedly falsifying his Covid-19 vaccination data and criminal association in a case that could result in a prison sentence of 12-16-years if he is fully convicted.
Bolsonaro—who denies any wrongdoing—is also banned from seeking any political office for eight years due to his alleged abuse of power related to baseless claims of fraud in the 2022 presidential election.
A 2023 Brazilian congressional inquiry also found that Bolsonaro was the "intellectual and moral author of a coup movement" that culminated in the January 8, 2023 attacks on government buildings, and he and scores of his supporters should be criminally indicted for their "willful coup attempt."
Bolsonaro's autocratic actions have been compared to those of former U.S. President Donald Trump, long ago earning him the nickname "Trump of the Tropics." Bolsonaro sought refuge in the United States following the January 2023 attacks and the inauguration of leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated him in the runoff round of the 2022 presidential election.
"Bolsonaro the Jewel Thief" trended on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, following Thursday's indictments.
"Today is a great day for people who believe in justice," said one Socialism and Liberty city councilwoman in Belo Horizonte.
As The Dalai Lama Turns 89, Exiled Tibetans Fear A Future Without Him
In a monastery beneath snow-capped mountains in northern India, the Buddhist monk entrusted with protecting the Dalai Lama and foretelling his people’s future is concerned.
The Dalai Lama turns 89 on Saturday and China insists it will choose his successor as Tibet’s chief spiritual leader. That has the Medium of Tibet’s Chief State Oracle contemplating what might come next.
“His Holiness is the fourteenth Dalai Lama, then there will be a fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth,” the medium, known as the Nechung, said. “In countries, leaders change, and then that story is over. But in Tibet it works differently.”
Tibetan Buddhists believe that learned monastics are reincarnated after death as newborns. The Dalai Lama, who is currently recuperating in the United States from a medical procedure, has said he will clarify questions about succession – including if and where he will be reincarnated – around his ninetieth birthday. As part of a reincarnation identification process, the medium will enter a trance to consult the oracle.
The incumbent Dalai Lama is a charismatic figure who popularised Buddhism internationally and won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for keeping alive the Tibetan cause in exile. Beijing sees him as a dangerous separatist, though he has embraced what he calls a “Middle Way” of peacefully seeking genuine autonomy and religious freedom within China.
Any successor will be inexperienced and unknown on the global stage. That has sparked concerns about whether the movement will lose momentum or grow more radical amid heightened tensions between Beijing and Washington, long a source of bipartisan support for the Central Tibetan Administration, Tibet’s government-in-exile.
The CTA and its partners in the West as well as India, which has hosted the Dalai Lama in the Himalayan foothills for more than six decades, are preparing for a future without his influential presence.
U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to soon sign a bill that requires the State Department to counter what it calls Chinese “disinformation” that Tibet, which was annexed by the People’s Republic of China in 1951, has been part of China since ancient times.
“China wants recognition that Tibet has been part of China … throughout history, and this bill is suggesting that it would be relatively easy for Tibet supporters to get a western government to refuse to give recognition for such an extensive claim,” said Tibet specialist Robert Barnett of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.
U.S. lawmakers, including former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, visited the Dalai Lama in June to celebrate Congress passing the legislation, which Sikyong Penpa Tsering, who heads the CTA, called a “breakthrough.”
The bill is part of a strategic shift away from emphasizing Chinese rights violations such as forced assimilation, the Sikyong, or political leader, told Reuters. Since 2021, CTA has lobbied two dozen countries including the U.S., to publicly undermine Beijing’s narrative that Tibet has always been part of China, he said.
With U.S. weight behind this strategy, the exiles hope to push China to the negotiating table, he said. “If every country keeps saying that Tibet is part of the People’s Republic of China, then where is the reason for China to come and talk to us?”
The Chinese foreign ministry said in response to Reuters’ questions that it would be open to discussions with the Dalai Lama about his “personal future” if he “truly gives up his position of splitting the motherland” and recognised Tibet as an unalienable part of China.
Beijing, which has not held official talks with the Dalai Lama’s representatives since 2010, has also urged Biden not to sign the bill.
The office of the Dalai Lama, who has in recent years apologised for remarks he made about women and to a young child, referred an interview request to the Sikyong.
SUCCESSION QUESTIONS
Most historians say Tibet was assimilated into the Mongol empire during the 13th-14th century Yuan dynasty, which also covered large parts of present day China. Beijing says that established its sovereign claim, though scholars believe the relationship varied greatly over the centuries and remote Tibet largely governed itself for much of the time.
The People’s Liberation Army marched into Tibet in 1950 and announced its “peaceful liberation”. After a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959, a young Dalai Lama fled into exile in India.
In 1995, atheist China and the Dalai Lama separately identified two boys as the Panchen Lama, the second-most-important Tibetan Buddhist leader. The Dalai Lama’s pick was taken away by Chinese authorities and has not been seen since.
Many Buddhists consider Beijing’s choice illegitimate, though most expect a similar parallel selection for the next Dalai Lama given the Chinese government’s stance that he must reincarnate and it must approve the successor.
Chinese authorities have “tried to insert themselves into the succession of the Dalai Lama but we will not let that happen,” said Michael McCaul, Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee during his Dharamsala visit.
India, whose troops clashed with China near the Tibetan plateau in 2022, has been less vocal about its position on succession.
“The U.S. … does not have to worry about border incursions as India does,” said Donald Camp, a former top South Asia official on the U.S. National Security Council.
But as home to tens of thousands of Tibetans and an ascendant voice on the global stage, Delhi will be pulled into the fray, observers of Indian diplomacy say. Hawkish commentators have already called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to meet with the Dalai Lama as a way of pressuring China.
Delhi’s Ministry of External Affairs declined to comment on the succession but its former ambassador to China, Ashok Kantha, said India would not be “comfortable with China trying to control that process.”
“Privately we have told China … that for them the best option is engaging with the Dalai Lama and his representatives,” said Kantha. “Post-fourteenth Dalai Lama we don’t know what will happen.”
The respect that the Dalai Lama commands among Tibetan exiles has kept in check frustrations and a formal push for independence, though it isn’t clear if that balance will be maintained following his death.
Tibetan Youth Congress general secretary Sonam Tsering said his advocacy group respected the Middle Way but, like many other young Tibetans, it wanted full independence.
For now, Tibetans are focused on supporting the Dalai Lama in fulfilling his desire to return to his homeland before his death, he said.
But if the wish “is not fulfilled, then the emotional outburst, the emotional challenges they are going through, it’s very difficult to think of,” he said.
The Sikyong said CTA’s new emphasis on challenging China’s narrative united pro-independence Tibetans with those pursuing the Middle Way, as Tibet’s historical status was a point of common agreement.
On Saturday, tens of thousands of Buddhists and well-wishers around the world will gather to celebrate and pray for the long life of a leader who for them represents the strongest hope of an eventual return to Tibet.
But time for both the Dalai Lama and his people is starting to run out.
(REUTERS)
Dalai Lama dismisses health rumours
Tibetan spiritual leader says he feels ‘physically fit’ as he turns 89
The Dalai Lama exchanges greetings with former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during their meeting at Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh state in northern India, on June 19. (Photo: Tenzin Choejor/Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama via Reuters)
NEW DELHI - The Dalai Lama said on Saturday he is recovering from a knee surgery and feels “physically fit”, brushing aside rumours of ill health on his 89th birthday.
“Recently I had surgery on my knee, which has given me some problem. However, I am recovering and have no problem at all now,” the exiled spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism said in a video message from the United States, where he is recuperating.
“There may be people trying to confuse you about my health, saying that the Dalai Lama has gone to a hospital and is undergoing treatments, and so on, making my condition sound grave. You don’t need to trust such misinformation,” he said.
A charismatic figure who popularised Buddhism internationally, the Dalai Lama won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for keeping alive the Tibetan cause in exile. He fled to India in 1959, nine years after China sent troops into the Himalayan region in 1950, saying it was liberating Tibetan “serfs”.
As the spiritual leader ages and battles health problems, the appointment of his successor has become a looming issue for Tibetans struggling for more autonomy in China or outright independence. Tibetan Buddhists believe that learned monastics are reincarnated after death as newborns.
The Dalai Lama has said he will clarify questions about succession — including whether and where he would be reincarnated — around his 90th birthday.
“I am nearly 90 now but I don’t feel unhealthy, except for the slight discomfort in my legs. I would like to thank all my fellow Tibetans in and outside Tibet for your prayers on my birthday,” he said, adding that some issues are part of ageing.
On Saturday, tens of thousands of Buddhists and well-wishers around the world are to gather to celebrate and pray for the long life of a leader who for them represents the strongest hope of an eventual return to Tibet.
The traditional Japanese ideal worker model is becoming unsustainable due to shifts in the labour force. This model, characterised by lifetime employment, long hours and unwavering loyalty, is struggling to adapt to a shrinking population and greater diversity. Companies are finding it difficult to attract and retain talent, as fewer young people aspire to lifelong employment and more value flexibility. To remain competitive, Japanese companies must challenge their assumptions and embrace a more inclusive and adaptable approach to human resource management.
There is a significant shift occurring in the Japanese labour market. The model of work that supported Japan’s economic rise in the postwar period is meeting its demise. In that era, the ideal worker for Japanese companies was hired straight out of university, worked long hours, socialised extensively after work and committed oneself to a lifetime with the same employer. Today, the assumptions behind the ideal worker are outdated, and the model itself is no longer sustainable.
Under this postwar ideal, a worker ought to speak and write perfect Japanese, while having almost no responsibilities at home. This model and its underlying assumptions led to the complete specialisation between the sexes, with men working at the office, and women taking care of the home.
Japanese human resource management is best understood as a system of complementary and self-reinforcing institutions, such as lifetime employment and seniority-based wages. These essential features of Japanese human resource management became institutionalised during the postwar high-growth period. Companies provided generous salaries and benefits so that households could do well with a single earner. They also provided employment security so that salarymen could count on long-term employment. Bound by this implicit contract, the salarymen provided their utmost loyalty and hard work.
But the decline of this postwar model has led to the weakening of worker–employer relationships in Japan, largely on account of major shifts in the supply of labour.
Japan’s population is shrinking and along with it, its labour force. There is a dire labour shortage, with no end in sight. Companies can no longer afford to choose only from among the supply of Japanese males.
More women are working, and the traditional housewife is becoming a relic of the past. In most households, both spouses work at least part-time. With the assumption of a stay-at-home homemaker no longer viable, pressure is mounting on men to contribute more to household work.
Workers’ tastes and preferences are also changing. The dependence between worker and employer is weakening. A 2024 survey found that only 21 percent of young people want to work for the same company until retirement, compared to 35 per cent in 2014. Workers want more flexibility in time and place, especially after COVID-19.
There are more foreigners in Japan’s workforce than ever before, who bring with them different work norms, values and expectations that may not be compatible with the profile of the old ideal.
Technological change is also accelerating. In the typical Japanese company, new graduates enter the organisation at the bottom, and are trained and promoted internally. But technological change moves fast, and training people internally has its limits. To secure the best talent, companies must recruit externally to remain competitive. The frequent entry and exit of people are disrupting long-held assumptions of loyalty and of shared affiliation and identity.
In spite of these ongoing changes, some companies still cling to the ideal worker model. Organisational inertia can be overpowering, and social norms do not change overnight. Japanese companies and Japanese culture in general are not known for their flexibility. The default response has been more about assimilation — expecting people to conform — and less about inclusion, which is about embracing differences. Instead of employers adapting to a diversifying labour force, many still expect workers to adapt to them.
More women are pursuing professional careers, but they are expected to work ‘just like men’ to succeed, especially with respect to work hours. Remote work was common during the COVID-19 pandemic but is increasingly less so now because many employers still believe that work must take place at the office.
Language skill requirements impede the employment of foreign workers. A 2022 government survey found that the level of Japanese required by companies is too difficult for many international students who wish to work in Japan. A 2021 survey found that 75 per cent of Japanese companies demanded that non-Japanese job seekers meet or exceed the highest level on the country’s standardised language proficiency test. In reality, only 37 per cent of job seekers can satisfy this requirement, which means companies are missing out on many talented workers.
Firms that continue to hold out for the ideal worker will not be competitive. As Japan’s labour force globalises and diversifies, perpetuating outdated norms does not increase the country’s attractiveness to the rest of the world. Japan is one of the top destinations for tourism, but in IMD’s world talent ranking, which evaluates the ability of countries to develop, attract and retain talent, it ranked 43 out of 64 countries.
When tastes and lifestyles change, it is unrealistic to assume that workers uniformly prioritise work over family. When the labour force shrinks, companies must make the shift from selecting people to being selected by them.
Hiroshi Ono is Professor of Human Resource Management at Hitotsubashi University Business School.
Maloraneng village. Photo provided by The Colonist Report, used with permission.
For eight months, Elfredah Kevin-Alerechi, Sechaba Mokhethi, and Cindy Sipula investigated years of outcry from residents living near a UK diamond mining company. Their investigation report was originally published by The Colonist Report, and a shorter version is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.
Gem Diamonds Limited, a diamond mining company based in the United Kingdom that has won awards for improving local communities’ access to clean water, has been accused of polluting drinking water in three villages in Lesotho, southern Africa.
On October 31, 2023, The Colonist Report visited three villages in Lesotho’s Maluti Mountains — Maloraneng, Patising, and Lithakong. All of the community residents we interviewed blamed Letšeng Diamonds — a subsidiary of Gem Diamonds — for channelling wastewater into the river which is the major source of water for drinking, cooking, washing, and fishing.
The Indigenous people who we interviewed alleged that the polluted bodies of water have caused the deaths of animals, the extinction of fish, illnesses in locals, and the death of a child.
A satellite image shows what looks like a suspected pipe from the company’s facility linked to Feeane, the community river.
On January 24, we collected samples of the water flowing out of the Letšeng Diamonds wastewater pipe before it entered the community river. Additional water samples were taken from the Feeane stream (50 metres away from the company’s perimeter fence), as well as the Patising and Maloraneng streams.
We sent the water samples to a laboratory in neighbouring South Africa for testing. The test results revealed the presence of high levels of Escherichia coli (E. coli), 12 MPN/100mL, exceeding the limit of 1MPN/100mL, and nitrates of 30mg/L surpassing the acceptable upper limit of 11mg. Both levels of nitrate and E. coli are harmful to human health and animals.
According to the US National Centre for Biotechnology Information, drinking water contaminated with E. coli can cause illnesses such as diarrhoea, abdominal cramps, nausea, and intestinal tract infection. Nitrates can also be harmful to pregnant women. E.coli is a clear indicator of sewage or animal contamination.
Community struggles
Malineo Moahi’s nine-year-old granddaughter became ill and died in 2015 after drinking water from the river into which Gem Diamonds allegedly dumped its waste.
Moahi told us that her granddaughter developed rashes and difficulty breathing and was suffering from stomach pain when she decided to rush her to a local clinic. With no hospital or public transportation in her village, she decided to walk three hours through the high mountains to the Mapholaneng clinic while carrying her granddaughter on her back. “I had to return halfway because the baby died on my back.”
Moahi added, “Even as we speak, local children are crying about stomach pain. It is even worse during droughts; the water becomes too salty, and children get sick from drinking it.”
According to her, bathing in river water causes a face rash, itchy skin, and stomach pain. “I have eight children, and all of them have had these symptoms, though not at the same time.”
According to Moahi, the company sometimes releases water in the dam, and when the water in the slime dams is released, it comes down salty and with a white substance.
Photo shows a whitish substance from the water running out from the Letšeng Diamonds mine. Photo by The Colonist Report, used with permission.
“When an animal falls sick and dies from drinking the mine-contaminated water, we see the whitish salt substances when the stomach of the animal is cut open,” Moahi said.
Matokelo Moahi, a 40-year-old woman, said her grandchild, a nine-month-old baby, usually has skin rashes whenever she bathes and washes the baby's nappies with water from the contaminated stream.
Matokelo Moahi in her village. Photo by The Colonist Report, used with permission.
Moahi’s only other option is to walk 30 minutes to a reliable water tap in a neighbouring village, but during the drought, “we resort to the river,” she said.
The road to the Patising stream is only accessible through the company, and on January 24, 2023, The Colonist Report's collaborative partner, the MNN Centre for Investigative Journalism, was able to reach the stream. On the road to the stream, water was seen coming out with high pressure, flowing from the company's wastewater pipe into the Feeane stream, which joins the Khubelu River from the mine.
Meanwhile, since the slime dams were built, fishermen we spoke to said they could no longer get a catch. The villagers have sued the mine over this issue, and the case is pending in the High Court of Lesotho.
Before Letšeng Diamonds came, the situation was different: “If I catch a small fish, I will just throw it back into the water so I can catch a bigger fish, but now, I have to take it because there is no fish,” said a fisher, Likei Lemantla, displaying the small size of the fish he had caught after spending more than 10 minutes fishing.
Likei Lematla fishing at the bank of the Khubelu River. Photo by The Colonist Report, used with permission.
The 42-year-old fisherman has been fishing for two decades. He has two young children and a wife who rely on him to survive. He says he used to sell some of the fish to nearby villagers while his family ate the rest. “But now I do not sell any because I do not catch enough fish in the river.”
Company’s response
Gem Diamonds denied that it had spoiled the community’s water but instead has helped the community by providing water.
In an email, Mark Antelme, Gem Diamond's media officer, stated that the company was very concerned about the environment in its communities and has taken steps to reduce the impact of its activities:
“We are aware of higher levels of nitrates that leach off our waste rock dumps and, to a lesser extent, our coarse tailings dumps.” He said the company has put systems in place “to reduce nitrate levels before leaving the mine lease area and minimise the impact of this on the environment.”
Antelme mentioned that the measures include portable water retention dams and a wetland to trap and dilute the water leaching from these areas. Additionally, he noted that a bioremediation plant, which will significantly reduce the nitrate levels in the water leaching from the active waste rock dump, was recently completed.
A confidential report by MNN Lesotho has, however, shown that the company admitted to contaminating these water sources.
Gem Diamonds has profited from its activities in the countries where it operates, including Lesotho. The company’s full-year revenue for 2023 is USD 140.3 million, with a profit of USD 1.6 million, compared to revenue of USD 188.9 million in 2022, with a profit of USD 20.2 million.
GEM Diamonds made most of its profits from Letšeng Diamonds, with revenue totalling USD 1.3 billion from 2017 to 2023 and profits after tax of USD 259 million.
The government of Lesotho owns 30 percent of the Letšeng Diamonds Mine, while Gem Diamonds Limited purchased the mine in July 2006 and now owns 70 percent of its shares. Gem Diamonds reportedly paid USD 118.5 million for the company after De Beers operated the mine from 1977 to 1982.
Letšeng mine produces high-quality gem diamonds, consistently achieving the highest price per carat of any kimberlite mine in the world, according to the company. Since 2006, Gem Diamonds has produced three of the 20 largest white diamonds ever recorded.
BEIJING, July 6 (Xinhua) -- The 12th World Peace Forum (WPF) opened in Beijing on Saturday, focusing on improving global security governance.
Themed "Improving Global Security Governance: Justice, Unity and Cooperation," this year's forum is being attended by about 400 people, including former foreign political dignitaries, diplomatic envoys from various countries in China, experts, and scholars.
The forum includes four plenary sessions and over a dozen panel sessions, providing opportunities for in-depth discussions on various topics, such as promoting the concept of peaceful development, safeguarding fairness and justice, major-country relations, and regional development and cooperation.
The current international situation is turbulent, and the international system is facing increasing risks and challenges, said Li Luming, president of Tsinghua University and chairman of the WPF, at the opening ceremony of the forum.
"We firmly believe that the more turbulent and divided the world is, the greater the need for solidarity and coordination. The more tense and confrontational relations between countries are, the greater the need for dialogue and exchanges," Li said, adding that this is the practical value of the forum.
Initiated in 2012 by Tsinghua University and the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs, WPF is the first high-level forum concerning global security to be held by Chinese non-governmental organizations. ■
Why environmental activism survives Cambodia’s destruction of civil society
The jailing of Mother Nature activists highlights the justness of their cause.
A commentary by David Hutt 2024.07.04
Illustration by Amanda Weisbrod/RFA; Images by Adobe Stock
The Cambodian government has to claim to be committed to climate action. So it really doesn’t like people who point out the lie.
For years, the loudest critic has been Mother Nature, a group of environmental activists formed in 2013 that has often run afoul of the authorities.
In 2021, several members of the group documented waste run-off into Phnom Penh's Tonle Sap river, near the royal palace. This was linked to companies run by some well-connected individuals.
For this, they were charged with plotting against the government and insulting the king, two charges that prosecutors never even tried to prove in a trial that ended on July 2 with ten Mother Nature activists being sentenced to between six and eight years in jail.
Three were also convicted of defaming King Norodom Sihamoni, receiving sentences of eight years in prison. The other seven got six years behind bars.
Cambodian environmental activist Phuon Keoraksmey is arrested outside the Phnom Penh municipal court after a verdict on July 2, 2024. (Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP)
Five of the ten are currently in hiding or exile. They were tried in absentia. That includes the founder of Mother Nature, Spanish environmentalist Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson, who was deported from Cambodia in 2015.
It was “another crushing blow to Cambodia’s civil society,” said Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for research, Montse Ferrer. Igor Driesmans, the EU ambassador to Phnom Penh, tweeted that he is “deeply concerned about increasing persecution and arrests of human rights defenders in Cambodia.”
Indeed, Cambodia’s civil society is now a mere whisper of what it once was. Since 2017, it has been systematically dismantled.
The trade union movement has been broken up, while NGOs have been destroyed by lawsuits and jailings. Some middle-class liberals have been bought off with government jobs and promises of reform when Hun Manet, the son of the long-serving premier, inherited the prime ministership last year.
However, unlike all other forms of activism that came before, environmentalism has endured. That’s partly because groups like Mother Nature refused to self-censor. But it is also structural.
In the past, civil activism was disparate. Cambodia had a strong trade union movement, but this was only in the garment factories. It had loud middle-class urbanites, but they stayed in the cities and campaigned for liberal reforms.
People in the countryside protested when their land was taken away and given to well-connected businesses, but they rarely connected with other groups.
The now-dissolved Cambodia National Rescue Party brought some of the voices under one roof for a brief period between 2012 and 2017, but once the party was dissolved that year, on laughable accusations of plotting a coup, the civil activist groups splintered.
Not environmentalism, however. That’s because, unlike most other causes, it unites rural folk and urbanites, rich and poor, nationalists and cosmopolitans. It is intensely patriotic, whereas some other campaigns could be rebuked as un-Cambodian. And it doesn’t grapple with abstracts.
Debates about human rights and democracy are messy. There are spectrums. There’s subjectivity. Only at the extremes can one see authoritarianism in action.
Cambodia security officers clash with a union member near the National Assembly during a protest against the trade union law in Phnom Penh, April 4, 2016. (Samrang Pring/Reuters)
The Cambodian authorities don’t arrest hundreds of people daily. There is no public flogging. You can spend your entire life keeping your head low and avoiding the jackboot.
But the environmental cause is different.
Cambodians pass a river and see how more polluted it gets each day. They can watch the forests disappear. They can experience the droughts that are now more common. They can see where the lakes once were, now filled in for construction.
If their house is flooded because the land around them has been destroyed and built over, that creates a more immediate sensation of grief and anger than reading that the U.S. has downgraded Cambodia to the lowest Tier 3 ranking for money laundering.
Environmentalism threatens a corrupt state
Whereas a propagandist can dismiss human rights and democracy with claims of “Asian Values” and the need for social stability over individual rights, no one can explain away deforestation, mass pollution, and environmental destruction as anything other than a crime against the nation itself.
That’s why environmentalism poses such risks for autocratic regimes. It’s ridiculous the courts ruled that the Mother Nature activists plotted against the state. But, in a sense, the cause does threaten the state.
What it reveals is just how much Cambodia’s political system is a criminal racket.
Cambodia’s political system is feudal-ish: It’s a political aristocracy, composed of corrupt and incestuous families. But it depends on the money and patronage of economic barons, the financiers.
Money flows up and favors flow down. Those favors include illegal logging, land grabs, industrial pollution, and the destruction of waterways.
Volunteer students and Buddhist monks collect plastic waste from a sewage canal to set an example and educate people on proper plastic disposal in Phnom Penh on Oct. 28, 2023. (Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP)
The tycoons may donate some money to some good causes, but the environmentalists come along and point out that this money was made by destroying the country’s natural resources.
The ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) claims to represent the “people of the soil,” but the environmentalists show that it puts the interest of capital above the interests of the people.
The CPP derides its opponents as cosmopolitans bought and owned by the West, but the environmentalists prove that the CPP government has presided over the utter gutting of Cambodia’s natural wealth, frequently by foreign-owned companies.
Ly Chandaravuth, one of the activists jailed this week, said this before the trial: “When [political elites] destroy our country, they have taken on new nationalities; they have millions of dollars; they can run to live in other countries when our country is destroyed, leaving only us who live in this country. If we don’t protect our country, we will be victims in the future.”
Greens are hard to silence
Cambodia is starting to experience something similar to what began in Vietnam in the late 2000s when environmentalism and nationalism morphed into a new, powerful force.
In 2008, Vietnamese activists, including war-era generals, sparked a new movement after lambasting the ruling Communist Party for selling off Vietnamese land to Chinese bauxite miners.
Ever since, eco-nationalism has been the trigger for Vietnam’s largest protests. The communist authorities have no response other than repression when the government is derided for not only destroying the country’s habitat but for doing it to get a quick Chinese buck.
It matters on another level, too.
The likes of Cambodia now see climate action as a basis for international aid diplomacy.
Promise some Hail-Mary green goal and the European Union will ignore all of your other vices. Laud Beijing as the Global South’s environmental savior and you get investment capital from China. Talk about renewable energy infrastructure and Japan is at the front of the queue with bags full of cash.
Washington isn’t so easily bought off with green platitudes, but talk about climate action in terms of self-sufficiency – meaning less dependency on China – and the U.S. gets on board, too.
Cambodian environmental activists Ly Chandaravuth, right, Phun Keoraksmey, second from right, Thun Ratha, second from left, Long Kunthea, left, sit outside Phnom Penh municipal court on July 2, 2024. (Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP)
The sums involved for this green agenda are in the tens of billions. Most of the money is essential for economic development. Much of it flows into companies or ventures controlled by political elites or the economic barrons.
This means that there’s a lot on the line when homegrown environmentalists point out that the government is lying about its green agenda, that the government isn’t as green as it pretends. So all the more reason for regimes to see eco-nationalism as an existential threat.
The fact of the matter is that the Mother Nature activists will now have to endure the hell of prison for years. But their cause will persist.
Autocratic regimes like Cambodia’s cannot silence the eco-nationalists because their revelations are obvious to all.
Cambodians don’t need to understand theories of democracy to see that their forests are disappearing, that their rivers are overflowing with filth, that droughts are now more common and their crops are becoming harder to grow, or that their land is being torn apart by an elite that will never have to suffer the consequences.
David Hutt is a research fellow at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS) and the Southeast Asia Columnist at the Diplomat. He writes theWatching Europe In Southeast Asianewsletter. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of RFA.
