Vein Vorn sentenced to one year in prison
Vein Vorn was released on 3 March 2016 after his 1 year sentence was partially suspended.
On 9 September 2016, the court of appeal upheld the conviction and one-year suspended sentence of human rights defender Mr Vein Vorn. He was arrested on 7 October 2015 by the authorities and detained at the Koh Kong provincial prison as a result of his involvement in the construction of a communal meeting place for the members of the Areng Valley community.
Vein Vorn is a human rights defender and representative of the Areng Valley community. Together with the grassroots movement Mother Nature, members of the Areng Valley community have opposed the proposed construction of a hydroelectric dam by the Pheapimex group and their Chinese partner Sinohydro. They believe that the proposed dam will cause massive social and environmental damage in the region and could lead to flooding in parts of the Areng Valley, displacing the Khmer Daeum indigenous population and destroying the ancestral homes of the valleys inhabitants.
On 9 September 2016, the court of appeal upheld the conviction and one-year suspended sentence of human rights defender Mr Vein Vorn. He was arrested on 7 October 2015 by the authorities and detained at the Koh Kong provincial prison as a result of his involvement in the construction of a communal meeting place for the members of the Areng Valley community.
On 3 March 2016, the Koh Kong Provincial Court found him guilty of harvesting forest products without a permit and sentenced him to one year imprisonment. His sentence was suspended and he was released from Koh Kong provincial prison, where he had been detained for five months since his arrest.
Front Line Defenders condemns the conviction of Vein Vorn, and believes that these acts are directly related to his work in defence of human rights.
On 7 October 2015, human rights defender Mr Vein Vorn was arrested by the authorities and detained at the Koh Kong provincial prison, in southwestern Cambodia.
He faces up to five years imprisonment as a result of his involvement in the construction of a communal meeting place for the members of the Areng Valley community.
On 7 October 2015, at approximately midday, the human rights defender was arrested at the provincial court and brought to the Koh Kong provincial prison. The arrest followed a police questioning regarding the charges he is facing relating to the construction of a communal meeting place for the members of the Areng Valley community.
He is accused of violating Article 98 of the Forestry Law (“the unauthorized harvesting [of] forest products and by-products”) and Article 533 of the Criminal Code (“destroying, displacing or removing of any object from the scene of a felony”) and risks up to five years imprisonment.
In the Koh Kong prison the human rights defender joined three other environmental rights defenders and members of Mother Nature movement, Messrs Try Sovikea, Sun Mala and Sim Samnang.
In August 2015 they were detained for protesting in front of a parliament building in Phnom Penh, and calling on the government to stop a Vietnamese sand dredging company from polluting the environment in Koh Kong province. They are charged with violating Article 424 of the Criminal Code, (“threats to cause destruction followed by an order”), if found guilty they face up to two years in prison and a fine of up to US $1000.
On 2 September 2015, seventeen members of a Cambodian human and environmental rights group, including Vein Vorn, were briefly detained by authorities in Koh Kong province for partaking in a protest calling for the release of the three detained environmental rights defenders.
