Lan and her elderly husband, Peam, were arrested in 2020 for farming rice in a restricted conservation area.
The small plot of land they relied on to feed their family lay in the middle of the 292,690-hectare (723,250-acre) Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary in northeast Cambodia, a forest rich in biodiversity and intermixed with local and migrant farming communities. Much of the forest is now part of one of Southeast Asia’s most prominent carbon offset projects.
Like many of their neighbors in remote Kmoum village, Lan and her husband identify as Bunong, an Indigenous ethnic minority group which has traditionally engaged in swidden agriculture and lacked records of official land ownership. Peam was imprisoned on the charge of illegally clearing state land, his wife recalls.
