The articles that we have receive this week is in a location not far from where we are, the Cambodian forest.
Mr. Chut Wutty, the Cambodian forest activist and the head of the Natural Resource Protection Group, was shot about a week ago. He died working to stop people from destroying the forest, to stop private companies who worked with the government to start large illegal logging operations.
Mr. Mathieu Young, a 30 year old Los Angles-based photographer, who spent a couple of days with Mr. Chut Wutty, taking pictures for evidence of illegal logging. He was there then Mr. Chut Wutty was shot, but missed to see the real shooting when he ducked for cover.
“All these foreign companies that are just strings of letters,” Mr. Young said, “To the locals, they’re all called ‘the company, the company, the company.’”
To think that the companies are taking away the land of the people the used to survive, it’s horrible. They didn’t just simply clear the trees and start mining the land, they hired the locals to cut them down the trees, and to collect what ever resin they could find. It was suppose to be protected land, to save the resources and the people that lives with it, but the government is too scared of the ‘powerful, mysterious companies’ to say no.
You can hear chain saws going everywhere,” Mr. Young said. “It’s pretty devastating to see the scale of the deforestation. It’s happening all over the country.
“The government would say this is a protected land, and he’d say ‘Yeah, the chain saws are louder than the law,’ ”
I look up to Mr. Chut Wutty, as a person who’s willing to risk his life to do the things that he knows is right. I’ve been to Cambodia before, it’s beautiful there, both trees and ruins, I hope that none of those places are effected by the private companies that is cutting down trees.
May 14th, 2012 at 11:31 am
Jenny,
I like your article and how you also put in how you look up to Mr. Wutty. I feel the same way.