She shall not be moved | Bangkok Post: news

Five years ago, Boeung Kak Lake was Phnom Penh's largest. It served as home to some 20,000 Cambodians as well as the capital's backpacker ghetto, where foreign travellers would sit on guest house patios in a cannabis haze to watch the sun set over the waters and finish another Angkor Beer. And although the lake was full of sewage and debris and was hardly pristine, it served as an important catchment basin for the capital, providing equilibrium during the wet and dry seasons.

PRESSING FORWARD: Tep Vanny talks to the media during a protest in Phnom Penh. PHOTO: COURTESY OF AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

In 2007, the government sold 133 hectares of the lake area in a 99-year lease to an obscure private development company, Shukaku Inc, for US$79 million. Now some 90% of the lake has been filled in with sand, the backpackers are gone and most of the communities that lived there have been dispersed _ either because they accepted the paltry compensation or relocation offers or because they succumbed to the threats, coercion and intimidation of local police and company workers.