Lakeside residents set misery to music
They’ve wept, they’ve yelled and they’ve prayed as they watched excavators tear down their homes, so perhaps it’s understandable that the residents of Boeung Kak lake are now turning to song. “Mom goes to protest, the children cry and sleep on the ground,” go the lyrics to the plaintive title track on Development Separates Families, a music CD written and composed by Boeung Kak residents facing eviction by real estate developer Shukaku Inc. Sitting in a blue tent on the site where eight of their homes were demolished little more than a month ago, villager Tep Vanny, who sings on one of the eight tracks, said yesterday that the song is meant to express the loneliness of the children of Boeung Kak lake residents, who often have nobody to take care of them when their mothers go to protest…
