In Cambodia's refugee camps, fear lingers as uneasy peace holds

The Age

10-08-2025

It is quiet in the temple-flecked jungles of the Dangkrek Mountains, where Thailand and Cambodia just fought a pointless five-day war.
Still, the Wat Bat Th'kao camp is heaving.
Too scared to go home even days after a ceasefire, thousands of Cambodian families huddle here in wooden wagons, unfolding themselves when space permits on hammocks and cardboard mats.
As shelter from alternating blasts of monsoon rains and searing sun, they have tarpaulin, canvas and ropes.
'It is windy. It is raining. It is hot,' says Hong Srey Rith, cradling her newborn, Lin Kakada, who was born on July 24.
That was the same day when months (or centuries) of oscillating agitations and insecurities in Thailand and Cambodia burst forth into armed clashes, killing dozens – possibly many dozens – on both sides of the disputed borderlands.
The mother, from Kauk Chhouk village in Cambodia's north-west, went into labour as she and hundreds of thousands of people from Thailand and Cambodia fled their homes. After one night in hospital, mother and daughter had nowhere to go but the camp.
'I want to go home, but the authorities don't want that yet. There's a chance there will be more fighting,' she says. 'I'm afraid, too, that it will continue.'
Wat Bat Th'kao, the name of a nearby Buddhist temple, is divided into dirt streets, each lined with makeshift shelters. Some families have dug small trenches to drain off the rain. There are toilet facilities, and a medical centre treating mostly fevers.
Men with loudspeakers announce new NGO and private company deliveries of food and water: 'Stay where you are and rations will be delivered', goes one paraphrased set of instructions. No one rushes. The families here say they are reasonably well-fed, but could do with more.
Waist-high in the acrid reservoir at the edge of the camp, a boy of about ten crab walks along the line of a fishing net, hauling each section to eye level.
He catches only grimy plastic bags and bottles.
A couple of hundred metres from him is Ron Touch, who is blind, mostly deaf and the rarest of Cambodians. Old.
The 98-year-old is drawn into a crouch inside the family tent, a blanket draped over her shoulder, her great-great grandson shouting information into her ear.
She understands just one of this masthead's questions: 'Yes, I'm scared!' she responds.
Wat Bat Th'kao camp, named after the nearby Buddhist temple, is one of the biggest of 180 temporary shelters set up across multiple Cambodian provinces when fighting broke out on July 24.
By the evening of July 30, almost two full days since ceasefire, more than 170,000 Cambodians remained displaced, according to World Vision.
Thais, too, fled in similar numbers. At least 17 civilians were killed by indiscriminate Cambodian rockets, according to the Thai authorities. At least one Cambodian civilian was killed – in a Thai bombing run over a Buddhist temple.
In the to-and-fro of claims, counterclaims and online propaganda, it was unclear if any side had advanced and maintained troop positions on enemy territory.
What is clear is that the fighting has upended hundreds of thousands of lives in the newest, and most unexpected, crisis to unfold in Australia's Asia-Pacific neighbourhood.
Occupied with the Middle East and the Pacific, Foreign Minister Penny Wong has not spoken of the crisis beyond a post on social media platform X welcoming the July 28 midnight ceasefire.
The Department of Foreign Affairs' public contribution has been through Smartraveller, warning Australians not to visit the border provinces of either country.
Uncertain about whether the ceasefire would hold, many Cambodian families chose to wait at the camps. They say provincial authorities had told them to wait until at least August 5 or 6.
Then, an announcement from Cambodia's Ministry of National Defence on the evening of August 3 changed everything again. Only that morning, it claimed, at 10.49am to be precise, it had received information that Thailand had instructed its citizens in Surin Province to evacuate.
The same 'source' had also apparently warned of planned Thai attacks at ultra-sensitive sites including the Ta Moan Thom temple, the epicentre of the recent fighting, and the world-heritage listed Preah Vihear temple complex, which the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled was on Cambodia's way back in 1962.
Former prime minister Hun Sen, who still calls the shots as president of both the senate and ruling Cambodian People's Party, took to social media to inform his followers that he 'will not be able to chair the Senate meeting on the morning of August 4 whether there is fighting or not, as I will be in command of the army 24 hours a day'.
As it turned out, the information was bogus. Thailand denied evacuating Surin Province. The most serious allegation Cambodia could muster the following day was that Thailand had moved barbed-wire and heavy machinery into areas of its territory.
It remained unclear why Hun Sen and the ministry warned of an imminent attack. But it did allow him to post more photos of him hard at work and, days before his 73rd birthday on August 5, very much in command, still defending his subjects from foreign 'invaders'.
The effect of this episode on civilians was that many who were thinking of leaving the camps held back; others who had already left returned.
In Kauk Chhouk, mother Hong Srey Rith's village, only 10 people from a population of 546 remained to feed all the pigs, according to local official Tong Pov.
'On the 3rd [August], there was fear of more fighting. Thirty families fled again after being back from the camp for only one or two days,' he said on Wednesday.
'They saw the crowd of villagers fleeing O'smach [a Cambodian border city] on the way back to the camps, and they followed.'
According to Cambodian government figures, the Wat Bat Th'kao camp still had a population of more than 14,000 people on August 5, a week after the first full day of the ceasefire.
The next biggest, Wat Phnom Kambor, had a population 13,700.
'This is where the legacy of the Khmer Rouge, civil war of the '80s, and battles of the '90s still linger in the minds of Cambodians. There is genuine fear that war can come back at a moment's notice and people scarper,' says Gordon Conochie, an author on Cambodian democracy and an analyst at La Trobe University.
'It's easy for people in the West to think that the bad times for Cambodia stopped in 1979 when the Khmer Rouge was toppled, but that's not the experience of Cambodians.'
On Thursday, senior Thai and Cambodian officials concluded a multi-day meeting of the General Border Committee in Malaysia, this year's chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
The 'fruitful' gathering produced a list of 13 agreements, which were broadly in line with the existing ceasefire deal both sides have accused the other of repeatedly wrecking.
In addition, the document did not get to the heart of the tension: where, precisely, were the borders, and who would be the arbiter?
Cambodia has previously said it wants the ICJ to adjudicate the true boundaries, as it did with the Preah Vihear Temple more than 60 years ago.
Thailand, more powerful and having lost the previous ICJ cases, has pushed back on this and wants to settle the boundary bilaterally.
Colonial-era map-making also poses a major problem. Cambodia insists on using the 1:200,000-scale map drawn-up by the French, its former colonial master, attached to a 1907 France-Siam (Thailand) agreement.
Thailand says the 1:50,000-scale map it uses is more precise. The problem is that the maps do not neatly align.
Amid flaming nationalistic tensions, where giving up as much as a stone to a historical enemy could do mortal political harm, neither side right now looks ready to budge.
Still, the border committee meeting agreement hit peaceful notes.
Neither side would increase forces along the border, it said. Neither side would build military infrastructure on the other's territory. Neither side would fire unprovoked at the other's positions.
A senior official in Oddar Meanchey Province told this masthead on Thursday it was awaiting directions from the national government about when, and if, to close the camps.
At Wat Bat Th'kao camp last week, Phan Mao is packing up to leave. Her husband has stayed behind in their village to care for the pigs. While she is desperate to join him, she is nervous.
'I just want all parties to reach an agreement,' she says. 'I don't want any fighting.'