Gonzalez-Davidson and his Mother Nature co-founder San Mala were detained without charge by immigration officials at around 1:15pm in the riverside area of Phnom Penh.
General Khieu Sopheak, spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, suggested the ministry had shown restraint in not bringing criminal charges against the activist.
“We are not detaining him [for long], but just to force him out of the Kingdom. We have the right to send him to court and imprison him from one to three months, but we don’t do that,” he said.
A senior immigration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed Gonzalez-Davidson was scheduled to go to Bangkok on an 8:35pm Thai Airways flight. In a text message from the plane, Gonzalez-Davidson said he was bound for his native Spain.
Mala was released from detention shortly before 6pm.
An immigration official, who asked not to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media, said that the order to deport the conservation campaigner had come directly from Prime Minister Hun Sen following a speech he made yesterday morning.
“Hun Sen made the direct order to arrest Alex after his speech,” the official said.
Wan-Hea Lee, country director of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said a UN worker had “learned that there [were] no charges against either [Gonzalez-Davidson or Mala]”.
Mother Nature said in a press release yesterday that “the authorities may have overstepped the law and detained Alex without proper cause”.
“Today, we have heard reports from communities in the Areng Valley . . . that a car with four Chinese workers supported by police and military has entered the valley. We will be doing everything we can to support the communities to halt what appears to be a resumption of the work,” the group added.
Edit : http://www.phnompenhpost.com/defiant-activist-ejected
