Machinery is used to dig up a section of Boeng Tamok as part of a sweeping number of sub-decrees that have privatised large swathes of one of Phnom Penh’s last lakes. Photo: Andy Ball/HaRDstories
- By Danielle Keeton-Olsen, Kong Sreyrath and Meng Kroypunlok
- Published
- 11 min read
Residents of Boeng Tamok Lake faced arrests, court cases, and intimidation as they resisted eviction from their homes. But a tragic accident would ultimately change the course of their fight.
Sea Davy left her home in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh a decade ago to work in South Korea, hoping to earn a better salary than raising fish on Boeng Tamok Lake could provide.
When she returned six years later in 2020, she learned her family and neighbours were facing eviction. Piece by piece, the Cambodian government was converting the more than 3,000-hectare Boeng Tamok lake into a new neighbourhood for government properties and well-connected individuals.
As the community began gathering and discussing their options, Davy realised she left South Korea with more than money. She believed that the Cambodian government should be doing more to protect vulnerable citizens, like herself and her neighbours.
“South Korea takes care of their people, and if they want to do business, the government helps,” she said. “In Cambodia, they didn’t help us.”
A core group of 17 families has resisted court orders, violence and intimidation attempts from government officials over the course of four years, hoping to sustain their livelihoods on Phnom Penh’s Boeng Tamok Lake. Their desire to preserve their homes and community clashes with lake-filling and construction projects that serve the nation’s wealthy and powerful.
Before the sand trucks rolled in, Boeng Tamok was the city’s largest natural lake at 3,239 hectares, and a critical floodplain at the crossing of the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers. But from 2018, the Cambodian government began reclassifying sections of the lake as private property and designating it for individuals and government bodies.
Between the natural monsoon season and the potential for climate change to exacerbate rainfall, Phnom Penh’s constant lake filling may supercharge the capital’s notorious flooding problems.
Some of the plots, published in sub decrees from Cambodia’s Council of Ministers, have been granted to government bodies, including the Interior Ministry, Defense Ministry and electricity utility. Others are designated for individuals, many of whom can be linked to prominent businesses or political figures.
Now that huge swathes of the lake have been filled in a four-year parade of sand trucks, the new occupants are starting to build flashy neoclassical mansions and a golf course that charges up to 205 USD for 18 holes. These pockets of luxury are interrupted by the roar of mega trucks spitting black fumes and small, sporadic dust storms from the sand filling.
One of the few areas that hasn’t been reclassified by the government is the protesting community living on the lake’s northern edge in Samraong commune – a village of stilted houses anchored to Street 130.
When residents first heard in 2019 that the lake would be incrementally filled, they united to gather more information and eventually protest, mounting a consistent campaign. Over the nearly five years of dissent, the remaining leaders say the financial strain, crackdown on protests, punitive court cases and the ceaseless march of construction have weakened their movement in the last five years.
What kept them going is their memories of how the lake has served them, and the potential it holds, said Soeun Srey Soth, one of the last Boeng Tamok protest leaders.
“This lake can support not only my livelihood and other families who live in this community, but also the more than one thousand families who live around this lake,” she said.
Leadership risks
In the first years of their campaign, the Boeng Tamok community attracted substantial attention and consistent coverage by local and international news outlets. They consistently held protests during major events like the ASEAN Summit in Phnom Penh, and held a cursing ceremony to spite the developers who seek to evict them – just like the communities who resisted the filling of Boeng Kak Lake in central Phnom Penh a few years earlier.
As Phnom Penh developed between 1990 and 2019, authorities made massive changes to the city’s lakes. According to the urban community rights NGO Sahmakum Teang Tnaut, of the 26 lakes within city limits, 16 have been completely filled in, and ten were partially filled, leaving no lake untouched.
The most notable dispute over a lake filling followed the decision to fill Boeng Kak, a central lake lined with businesses and a substantial residential community that united to oppose the politically connected development company Shukaku.
Authorities’ violent evictions and low compensation offerings put Cambodia in the international spotlight for its land rights abuses from late 2008 to mid 2015, leading the World Bank to temporarily freeze its funding to the country.
A satellite imagery timelapse from 1 January 2018, to 7 August 2024, showing the infilling of the more than 3,000-hectare Boeng Tamok Lake. Design by Andy Ball for HaRDstories.
The Boeng Tamok evictions have similarly been drawn out by authorities, and residents are increasingly targeted for their resistance.
When a land rights NGO began informing residents of the potential evictions in 2019, resident Prak Sophea was instantly engaged and regularly donated money to help support her neighbours. In 2022, she started regularly going to the meetings and then was elected as the community’s representative.
After one year, the responsibility became too heavy for her to bear.
“I gave a lot of interviews to news outlets, so that’s why I became a target,” she said. “I received a lot of threats, via letters from court and direct phone calls from [authorities], saying that they will arrest me even though I am hiding in my house.”
Sophea said she fled to Thailand last year in August and was granted U.N. refugee status in September, eventually gaining refugee status for her four children as well. She said she’s been sick and struggling to pay the expenses, and she would prefer to be at home near her husband and parents, who didn’t join her in exile.
If she returns to Cambodia, Sophea believes she would end up behind bars: she was issued an arrest warrant issued July 19. Even with refugee status, Thailand never signed the U.N. refugee treaty and has been known to deport Cambodian citizens seeking refugee status.
“I want to tell the truth: I am a woman leader nonviolently protesting to seek justice from [former Cambodian Prime Minister] Samdech Hun Sen for the [actions of] other government officers who received good compensation and benefits from the government,” she said. “Why is it that our community cannot get justice like them? Why evict us from our homeland?”
Since Sophea left, remaining protestor Davy said the community changed their leadership model to divide power among ten core members, including herself, in an attempt to prevent individuals from being targeted the way their former leader was.
“We worry that a leader will be targeted by the authorities and might die or be put in prison, so everyone can be a leader,” she explained. “Defending our homes and our livelihood is our right.”
Targeted at every angle
Srey Soth, 33, remembers when the lake and surrounding land provided the community bountiful harvests of rice, corn, cucumber and melons. She fondly recalls collecting the mushrooms that sprouted between the end of the rice harvest and the first weeks of the monsoon season.
“When the rainy season came, there was water everywhere, even covering the roads,” she said. “It looked so beautiful with clean and fresh water, not the dirty water drained from the city, and we had only nature such as lotus flowers, water lily flowers. It was so beautiful, and there were a lot of fish in the lake.”
Srey Soth said she’s not against all development, noting the new road along her property helps the community travel and find work, but she wishes her three children would have grown up in undisturbed nature, as she had.
Like the other resisting residents at Boeng Tamok, she has refused to accept the compensation that the government is offering in an attempt to retain their current livelihoods.
Another community member, Am Phoeun, 56, moved to Boeng Tamok from Prey Veng in 1993 while looking for work on Phnom Penh’s construction sites. She discovered a sanctuary by the lake, where her family of twelve could earn a substantial income by fishing and catching snails.
As more relatives joined them for the work and income available in the capital, her household grew to 52 members. However, she never had the chance to extend her stilted wooden home.
Phoeun said she took out loans totalling 15,000 USD in the late 2010s to start her own business raising fish and making fish cakes. But she was immediately hit by the economic collapse caused by Covid-19, and soon after, the authorities banned most Samraong commune residents on Boeng Tamok from operating fish farms.
“I want to cry because I wanted all this money to raise more fish,” she said. “Now it’s ruined.”
Phoeun, like others in the community, is simultaneously facing multiple charges from Phnom Penh courts. Her first charge dates back to 2022, when authorities claimed Phoeun assaulted an official. However, she asserts that the community has video evidence proving that none of the protesters used violence against officials.
The court found her and other accused community members guilty, and residents have since attempted to appeal the case. The community has also faced additional questioning, which Davy believes was an attempt to pressure them into giving up their fight.
“I think they’re using the court system to threaten people who protest,to scare them into accepting [the eviction],” said Davy. “This is a strategy used by the authorities across the country. What I wonder is why Cambodia uses the court system to threaten citizens who are victims, especially the poor.”
This month, nine members of the community were convicted and sentenced to two years in prison, which were also immediately suspended, by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court for an incident in October 2022. Community members still have other pending court cases that stem from clashes with authorities, Davy added.
Srey Soth, who faces court cases alongside her husband, said these cases leave her indebted and worried about the future of her preteen daughter.
“[My children] think that their mother or father might lose their home and be arrested and sent to prison, so they start to feel scared and [face] discrimination at school as well,” she said.
Authorities justify evictions
Prek Pnov district governor Them Sam An dismissed allegations that the government was harassing or harming residents, instead describing the government’s actions as helpful.
When asked what would be built on their homes, Sam An said it would be used for the road.
“As in every country, we do not allow people to live along the road, it is very dangerous not only for the kids, but also for adults when they walk along the sidewalk there and get into an accident,” he said. “It is very risky for them to live there in small, wooden houses.”
He also dismissed the residents’ land titles from the 1990s – which were seen by HaRDstories – saying they weren’t sufficient documentation.
He said in June that the government offered 10,000 USD compensation and new houses in a space for the families who had not yet accepted.
“Let’s compare our compensation [offer] to the place where they live every day, which is very dangerous and puts their life at risk,” he said. “So you can see, do the authorities oppress them or not?”
Uncertainty shakes residents
In May and June, the ten community representatives started to notice they were losing ranks. Community members would show up to events, like the daily livestreamed petitions along Street 130, but families who held out for the four years started accepting compensation packages.
Davy remained determined through May.
“I used to think about this, that because I’m involved, I would face problems one day,” Davy said. “The first possibility is that I could be put in prison, second, I could be killed, third, I might need to flee from my homeland, and fourth, our community could lose this protest and give up the land to the authorities.
“But I need to protect my rights, so I might have to face the first or second outcome.”
A road accident in June changed the course for the community.
Srey Soth’s husband was nearly killed on June 10 by a car, which struck his motorbike on his way back from buying fish feed in Kampong Cham province. He survived, but with an impaired memory, deep scars and more than 2,000 USD in hospital bills.
At the same time, workers began building a bridge in Boeng Tamok that cut into Srey Soth and other residents’ land.
Srey Soth decided she couldn’t fight anymore.
“It was really difficult to decide. If I didn’t do it, maybe I would have got nothing,” she said.
She accepted a compensation package of 12,000 USD and a new house in the designated resettlement area, and the government paid for her husband’s hospital stay. But Srey Soth said she quickly spent this money on furnishing the one-storey house and taking care of her family, and then took out an additional loan of 10,000 USD to cover her husband’s health expenses.
Srey Soth is still worried about the future, given her husband – able to walk around but often getting lost because of brain damage – needs constant care. Even after he can take care of himself, the new location, tucked away from the main road on a sandy alley, won’t allow her to run a business from her home as she had before.
“Now it’s okay, I’ve accepted it,” she said, sitting with her husband in front of her new house. “We don’t have a strong community and we can’t demand anything from the government.”
Shortly after Srey Soth accepted, other community members followed. When HaRDstories visited in August, Phoeun had dismantled the front half of her home, and she was waiting to move into the resettlement house.
Her family received enough space to keep the 54 people together, but they would need to work in factories or construction sites: around ten had already moved to the coastal city of Sihanoukville for construction labour.
When Srey Soth, one of the community leaders, accepted the compensation, Phoeun said the protestors couldn’t hold out against the government’s pressure anymore.
“Before we thought if we’re a unit we can demand to live here, but recently we just had ten families left holding out, so we didn’t have a group of people anymore,” she said.
Phoeun did not blame her neighbours, but she didn’t see any chance the community could come together in the future.
Davy is spending the last few weeks in her house on Boeng Tamok. She was among the last group to accept the compensation, though she said it hurt her greatly to give up the fight, but authorities were individually threatening the community.
“We were pressured, we couldn’t earn any money, we had to go to court, and we faced authorities daily since June. They persecuted us more and more,” she said. “Among the representatives of the people, it was only me left.”
In the end she said she made the decision to protect her family’s future, rather than leave them with nothing. But she fears for the future of residents in Cambodia, both at Boeng Tamok and beyond.
“When our communities had problems, other people didn’t help us,” she said. “So when the lake is completely filled, other people will have problems too. Other communities will also be evicted.”
She spoke about the importance of the lake, and wished in the future that officials would take into account the benefits of a natural resource and the people who rely on it before developing it, rather than targeting communities like hers until they break apart.
“In this country, even if we are right we cannot get justice.”
Danielle Keeton-Olsen is a freelance journalist based in Phnom Penh, covering land rights, environmental issues and labour. Follow her work at LinkedIn or X.
Andy Ball is a documentary filmmaker and photographer based in Cambodia, with a focus on environmental and human rights issues. He has worked for clients including the BBC, CBS, The New York Times and The South China Morning Post.
