Cambodia: UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention deems five environmental defenders’ imprisonment arbitrary & unlawful and urges for their immediate release
"Cambodia defies UN call to free ‘arbitrarily jailed’ environmental activists", 27 August 2026
… The Cambodian government has defended its continued imprisonment of five environmental activists, after the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared the five had been arbitrarily detained and called for their immediate release.
The activists, from environmental group Mother Nature Cambodia, have since 2024 been serving prison sentences of between six and eight years for allegedly plotting against the government.
In a 16-page opinion published in February, the U.N. working group said it had found that the imprisonment of Long Kuntha, 28, Ly Chandaravuth, 26, Phuon Keoraksmey, 25, Thun Ratha, 34 and Yim Leanghy, 37, met the conditions for arbitrary detention on the grounds that there was no legal basis for the arrests. It said authorities had targeted the activists for exercising their fundamental freedoms, making the detention discriminatory and resulting in severe violations of their right to a fair trial.
The opinion asked Cambodia to take immediate action on the matter in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the latter of which Cambodia ratified in 1992, and to provide evidence of having done so within six months. Contacted by Mongabay in August, six months since the working group’s findings, a government spokesperson said the activists would remain behind bars.
… The secretariat of the U.N. working group told … that any updates to the Mother Nature Cambodia case would be included in the forthcoming annual report to the U.N. Human Rights Council. But these reports are typically published in July, suggesting any update may be published next year.
In their opinion, the working group said the Cambodian Criminal Code provisions used to prosecute the activists were so “vague and overbroad … as to invite abuse and misuse” by authorities, and that the “Mother Nature Five’s detention therefore cannot be considered to be prescribed by law.”…