Cambodia's young environmental activists pay a heavy price

LONDON — It's risky to try to protect the environment in authoritarian Cambodia. Ten young activists from the Mother Nature environmental group were recently given long jail sentences. Two of them were sentenced to eight years on charges of plotting and insulting the country's king, seven were sentenced to six years for plotting, and the 10th — a Spanish citizen banned from entering Cambodia — was sentenced in absentia.

Four of the activists were then violently dragged away from a peaceful sit-in they had joined outside the court building. The five who have so far been jailed have been split up and sent to separate prisons, far away from their families.