CURRENT AFFAIRS ENVIRONMENT Deep in Cambodia’s Cardamom Mountains, a secretive factory processes a plant known as ‘yellow vine’. In an exclusive investigation, Southeast Asia Globe unravels a tale of greed and destruction Text and photography by Daniel Otis Chugging along: a Wildlife Alliance ranger stands in front of a factory middleman. Battered trucks ply the muddy roads, purchasing the vine from freelancing harvesters is to survey the site. The rangers are edgy to contain sulphuric acid. After ten days, Located in Pursat province’s Veal – prominent Cambodian environmentalist salt is added to thicken the frothy cocktail, Veng district, the factory is registered to Chut Wutty was shot to death shortly after which is mixed using propellers fixed to MDS Import Export – a firm owned by photographing stockpiles of yellow vine battered tractor engines. The chemical Cambodian logging tycoon Try Pheap. near a similar factory in April 2012. effluent is dumped, and the yellow gunk According to a 2013 report by Cambodia “He thought it was linked with drug lining the bottom of the vats is collected, Human Rights Task Force, a local NGO, production,” says Olesia Plokhii, a former then put in bamboo trays and sunned. companies belonging to Try Pheap and his Cambodia Daily journalist who was with Once dry, the resulting cake is broken into wife hold permits to exploit and develop Wutty at the time of his murder. “That was smaller pieces and laid out on the ground. more than 70,000 hectares of land in the whole reason we took the trip with Made of wood, tarpaulin and cor- Cambodia, nearly seven times the legal limit him.” Plokhii would later write about the rugated iron, the entire factory has a – an allegation that Try Pheap has denied. incident for Newsweek. ramshackle, impermanent feel. I count His companies have also been accused of The place is filled with the hum and more than 40 vats and hundreds of extensive logging in protected forests and THE FACTORY sentinel while, inside, masked workers busy in cosmetics, herbal remedies or narcotics. clatter of generators, pumps and engines. drying trays. Tubs of chloride and displacing nearly 1,500 families. The smell is noxious – something sour, sharp themselves over vats and trays as they trans- Ask where it goes, and you’ll hear Singa- Bundles of vine are being brought to the hydrogen peroxide could also be found. Cambodia’s 2002 Forestry Law prohib- and sweet like sulphur mixed with palm form a woody vine they call vohr romiet pore, Thailand, Vietnam or China. factory from across the Cardamoms. Grey Workers claim to make $200 a month, its “establish[ing] yellow vine… process- sugar – and it permeates the sprawling, into powdery nuggets the colour of ochre. When it comes to yellow vine, everyone on the outside with a dandelion core, they plus room and board – a decent sum for ing facilities at a level that may cause sig- makeshift factory that has been slashed out Ask them what the powder is being has more questions than answers. drip yellow when cut. The vines are placed a rural Cambodian. Throughout the site, nificant pollution or significant harm to of the jungle in southwestern Cambodia’s used for, and they say medicine, lotions A team of forest rangers spreads through in a woodchipper, then baskets of chips are rows of banana plants grow in soil con- the forest ecosystem.” A 2006 sub-decree, Cardamom Mountains. Around it, the or: “I don’t know.” In Phnom Penh, con- the factory. Overseen by conservation thrown into massive wooden vats where taminated with chemical effluent. moreover, makes it illegal to export charred stumps of ancient trees stand servationists guess that it is an ingredient NGO Wildlife Alliance (WA), their mission (1) Tenisons Photos: Peteris they’re bathed in a mixture that is believed We don’t stay long. both “yellow vine” and “yellow q 22 May 2014 SEA GLOBE SEA GLOBE May 2014 23 CURRENT AFFAIRS Sunkissed: trays of yellow vine powder dry in long rows beneath the searing hot sun The factory: it take less than two weeks for each vat to produce 200kg of yellow vine powder. The sludge-like plant extract can be seen on the right vine powder”. Nevertheless, MDS was ARA, until recently, yellow vine fac- it is being used for, though some say that When asked where yellow vine powder is to Dr Nimal Gunatilleke, a botanist from the list goes on. Similar operations to given a permit to operate its factory by tories were largely considered illegal. they boil the raw plant with water to treat going and what it is being used for, a repre- Sri Lanka’s University of Peradeniya who the one in Cambodia operate openly Cambodia’s Ministry of Agriculture, “The government and NGOs used to fevers and stomach aches. If they sell direct sentative from MDS declined to comment. has been studying C. fenestratum for more in countries such as Laos, and the use Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) in March really crack down on these factories,” to the factory, they can make about $0.10 MAFF, which has granted several exclusive than two decades, the plant has been used of berberine in traditional medicines last year. In exchange for paying royal- says Hardtke, who has been working on per kilogram. The freelancing middlemen logging rights to Try Pheap firms, ignored for millennia in Ayurvedic medicine. in places including Vietnam, Thailand, ties to MAFF and the government, MDS environmental issues in Cambodia since who ply the Cardamom Mountains’ roads multiple interview requests as well. “It’s been traditionally used like paracet- Sri Lanka, India and China has left C. is permitted to collect the plant from the 1996. “They would burn them down… in battered trucks pay roughly half of that. A Forestry Administration official, amol, for everything from headaches to fenestratum critically endangered. (now inundated) inundation zone of a But when they began building dams in “Many people from my village are doing however, agreed to meet. fever – it even has antibiotic properties,” An independent lab test conducted in controversial hydropower dam in the the Cardamom Mountains, suddenly a this,” one man says. “It’s better money “Yellow vine?” he said. “I’m not sure Dr Gunatilleke says. People travelling in December by UK-based Triple A Foren- Central Cardamom Mountains so long loophole was opened.” than working on a farm.” what they’re doing with it, but I heard it’s Sri Lanka’s forests, he adds, suck on the sics concluded that the sample of Cam- as it does “not affect the forest and the Everywhere along the Cardamoms’ The WA rangers see so much of the stuff used for cosmetics and dyes.” raw vine to relieve aches and pains. “Now bodian yellow vine powder they received surrounding environment”. narrow dirt roads, we see signs of activity: that confiscation is out of the question. in Sri Lanka, they even make soap and via a conservation NGO is a substance Clandestine yellow vine factories motorbikes camouflaged with vegetation; The day after the mission, the team is THE INVESTIGATION toothpaste with it.” containing berberine. The results of tests have operated in Cambodia’s south- bundles of yellow vine in ditches; farmers bombarded with calls from Cambodia’s Yellow vine is a colloquial term for The main medicinal compound in recently commissioned by Cambodia’s west for more than two decades. Pro- precariously balancing 60kg bundles of Forestry Administration – the body that Coscinium fenestratum: a woody climber C. fenestratum is berberine – an isoqui- National Authority for Combatting Drugs cessing has occurred in waves – heavy the stuff on their battered motorbikes; oversees and enforces laws pertaining to indigenous to the tropical evergreen forests noline alkaloid that is extracted from were not available at time of publication. exploitation, followed by periods in and lumbering jalopies piled high with the Cambodia’s protected woodlands. of South and Southeast Asia. Also known numerous plants worldwide. In addition In Cambodia, rumours have long per- which the plant disappears, then regen- plant. Trekking in the ‘protected’ forest, we “I had a fun morning,” the WA team’s as Columbo wood, tree turmeric and to its traditional uses, recent experiments sisted that yellow vine powder is being erates. According to Marcus Hardtke, find machete-wielding men, women and advisor tells me on the phone. “They’re Coscinium usitatum, the thick flowering have shown that berberine may also be used to manufacture narcotics. Espoused Southeast Asia programme coordina- children cutting the vine. Some attempt pissed off and telling us that we can’t do vine produces clusters of fruit and can an effective antibacterial, antiviral, anti- by people such as Chut Wutty and propa- tor for German conservation group to flee. None of these people know what anything about yellow vine.” grow to lengths of 30 metres. According depressant, anticancer, antioxidant… gated in a handful of stories in local q 24 May 2014 SEA GLOBE SEA GLOBE May 2014 25 CURRENT AFFAIRS Toxic waste: a slurry Nichols’ answer was an unequivocal no. A Cardamom Mountains. On the same site, slurry were seeping from the factory’s vats of chemicals foam and leaked 2006 cable from the US Embassy in other vendors from China and Vietnam and earthen detention ponds, and then spill over the vats. In the Phnom Penh corroborates this view. sell similar products for upwards of $100 entering a nearby stream. background is a mound of According to a representative from per kilogram. Chhim Savuth, formerly an investigator chipped yellow vine Cambodia’s National Centre of On its website, IMC sells numerous with the Cambodian Centre for Human Traditional Medicine, yellow vine has tra- herbal concoctions, three of which Rights, has interviewed people living ditionally been used in Cambodia to treat contain C.