Life After the Lake
… Shukaku, a company owned by a CPP Senator was given a 99-year lease to to the area in 2007. Immediately, the company started filling in the lake with sand and began kicking out thousands of families in what is one of the most notorious evictions in modern history. Shukaku had a different vision for what would stand on the drained and filled in lake; the firm would build hundreds of high-end residential units surrounded by large mixed-use power blocks. Despite an elaborate ceremonial groundbreaking last year attended by senior government officials, Shukaku’s vision appears to have stalled. Now with 90-hectares of empty land in the heart of an increasingly congested captial city, residents shared their visions of how Boeng Kak could be put to better use for the people, and the prestige, of Phnom Penh. ….
