In November 2023 Cambodia’s State Secretariat of Aviation (SSCA) announced that construction of Dara Sakor Airport (Cambodia’s fourth international airport after Phnom Penh Airport, Siem Reap Airport and Sihanouk Airport) was in its final stages. Dara Sakor Airport has been built to serve a gigantic tourism-oriented economic zone, the 451 square kilometre Dara Sakor project encompassing about one-fifth of Cambodia’s coastline. The Dara Sakor developer, Coastal City Development Group Ltd., calls the project ‘Coastal City’ and its website has pictorial maps indicating the many components of the project such as Dara Sakor Airport, a resort, tourism zone, golf courses and a port. The China-Global South Project reflected on the Dara Sakor project in 2023. Of all the anticipated infrastructure only the airport was completed. Yet the project continued with ‘considerable support from the government’. BBC reporters visiting Dara Sakor in September 2023 described unfinished roads and buildings as a stark contrast with ‘dazzling brochures for potential investors’.

Thousands of people have been forcibly displaced from their homes for the Dara Sakor project, losing their farming and fishing livelihoods. There have been many protests against eviction and inadequate compensation, in many instances met with repression. Unrest dates back to the inception of the project in 2008 when 360 sq km of land in the Botum Sakor and Kiri Sakor districts in the Koh Kong Province was reclassified as state-owned land. A 99-year lease contract was signed with Union Development Group (UDG) of China. Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association (Adhoc) reported that affected communities were not consulted about the project, some only becoming aware when officials arrived to measuring land. In 2011 the project site grew to 451 sq km when UDG was granted an additional 91 sq km land concession to develop a water reservoir and hydropower. During 2011 UDG began dismantling and burning down some villagers’ houses and destroying productive trees.

A key protest took place in February 2014 when about 140 people blocked the road to UDG’s offices leading to a clash with 40 UDG security guards and six soldiers carrying AK-47 rifles. Kiri Sakor District Governor said district authorities had ordered about 100 families to vacate their land for the Dara Sakor project’s hotels, golf courses and an airport. By September 2014 5,791 people had moved to a relocation site where they lacked access to former farming and fishing areas and suffered many problems including poor quality housing damaged by wind and rain, limited water that did not meet national standards, lack of electricity and health care facilities. Reports of destruction of houses and productive trees emerged again in 2018. In april April Koh Kong Provincial Court heard testimony from 13 families claiming that 60 UDG guards had burned their productive trees, seeking compensation for loss of cassava, jackfruit, mango, rubber and coconut crops.

On 27th May 2019 about 20 residents protested in front of the Chinese Embassy in Phnom Penh, calling for resolution of the 11-year land dispute. A report by the Community Legal Education Center stated that 1,143 families were forced to vacate about 100 sq km of land in the first five years fo the project but many families had resisted and fought for rights to the land. Four villagers were detained for 12 hours on 29th September 2020, after camping outside Koh Kong Provincial Hall calling for action over the 12-year land dispute with UDG. A year later 1,333 families rejected compensation offers of between 1 and 3.5 hectares and said they would fight to remain on their land. Protests against compensation offers continues into 2022; some declined the offer as it was insufficient and the village the government wanted to relocate people to was 100 km away and lacked infrastructure.

In June 2023, just four months before SSCA’s announcement about construction of Dara Sakor Airport entering its final stages, there was yet another protest by people affected by displacement for the Dara Sakor project. A group of villagers involved in a Dara Sakor related land dispute attempted to travel to Phnom Penh to submit a petition at the Ministry of Justice, but were met with a police roadblock. Eleven villagers were arrested, forced into a truck, returned to Koh Kong and charged with criminal incitement. Radio Free Asia reported that authorities threatened further arrests after about 20 villagers gathered outside the offices where the 11 people were being detained. Human rights organization Licadho said the protesters had not caused any social disorder and that police had been sent to the the area where many of them lived.

For more information including references for all source material see the case study on EJAtlas, the world’s largest, most comprehensive online database of social conflict around environmental issues – Dara Sakor project, Cambodia.