The cabins, mounted on wooden structures, rusty barrels, and patched floats, sway with the rising water during the monsoon season. Canoes serve as maternal bellies transporting children to schools through dirt roads that turn into wide Venetian canals. Some families use the flooded space between houses to raise carp and catfish in bamboo cages. Others cultivate floating gardens with pepper plants and papayas.
Tourist Siem Reap, northeast of Cambodia, is world-famous for the impressive temple complex of Angkor Wat, originally dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu in the 12th century. But in the depths of this province, around the immense Tonlé Sap, the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia, there are large communities settled on picturesque floating villages. Some of them, of Vietnamese ethnicity, have been trapped for decades in a complex limbo that does not allow them to progress.
They do not have Cambodian citizenship nor Vietnamese. Nor the right to legally settle elsewhere. They are stateless, eternal exiles in their own home. "More than 800,000 people live in these villages that flood when the rainy season begins, so all constructions are designed to float, and the economy revolves around aquatic farms and rice fields. 40% of the entire population is of Vietnamese origin. Although almost all were born in Cambodia or have lived here their whole lives, they live as undocumented migrants," explains So Cha, a resident of Siem Reap who makes a living by guiding small groups of tourists who want to experience the daily life of the stateless, known in the local slang as the "nobodies."
More than 800,000 people live in these villages that flood when the rainy season begins,LUCAS DE LA CAL / CRÓNICA / EL MUNDO
Chong Koh, one of the hundreds of floating villages, has long become an amusement park for foreign visitors, who sneak into the cabins to shamelessly photograph the intimacy of families who do not even have the right to protest. "They invade us and throw candies at our children as if they were animals. Moreover, the money from this tourism is distributed among agencies and local officials, they do not leave us anything nor invest in the village," protests Tah Mon, a Singaporean missionary and doctor who has spent almost a decade trying to promote humanitarian programs in this place.
The cabins of Chong Koh are supported by four elongated wooden pillars that prevent the rising water from entering the houses. In summer, the streets turn into canals, and residents move around in canoes. While men go fishing in the lake, women run local floating businesses or take children in boats to school or church opened by missionaries that have been converted into leisure rooms, administrative offices, or health centers. Depending on the moment, they serve one function or another. Days are monotonous in a place where citizenship is not a right but a privilege.
"The legal barrier we find here prevents many families from accessing medical care, banking services, or obtaining formal employment. They cannot move to the city or an official settlement because they are not allowed to rent or buy a house. They have no rights. Nor freedom of movement," says So, the guide.
The first Vietnamese arrived in Cambodia during the French colonial period when France controlled both Vietnam and Cambodia and encouraged the movement of traders between the two territories. Others arrived when fleeing the war between the communist troops of North Vietnam and the defeated army of the South, supported by the United States. Many families settled in Siem Reap and have lived in these villages for generations. But the Cambodian government has been reluctant to grant full citizenship even though there is now a majority of young people and children who neither speak Vietnamese nor have ever been to Vietnam.
Group of children in Siem Reap (Cambodia).LUCAS DE LA CAL / CRÓNICA / EL MUNDO
"To help these villages, there have always been humanitarian organizations that have opened schools, programs for clean water sanitation, or education on infectious diseases. But almost all of these NGOs were funded mainly thanks to USAID funds (the US development agency). That money stopped coming a few months ago, and many aid programs have been halted," points out the guide.
The Donald Trump administration canceled 83% of USAID programs this year, which distributes humanitarian aid through health and emergency programs in 120 countries. Its annual budget, previously $42.8 billion, represented 42% of humanitarian aid distributed worldwide. "Trump has evicted these people," says missionary Tah.
"In the floating villages, we have had many tuberculosis problems, especially. Cambodia has been one of the countries with the highest incidence of this infectious disease (302 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the World Health Organization). Thanks to the money that came from USAID, teams were trained for early diagnosis and free treatment. Mortality rates, especially in children, decreased significantly. But all those programs were stopped in April," he explains.
The Vietnamese communities settled in Seam Reap constantly denounce that, in addition to denying them Cambodian citizenship (automatic citizenship is not granted by birth in the country), the government continues to carry out mass evictions, expelling families from their precarious homes and distancing them from the livelihood provided by a fishing economy for living around the Tonlé Sap Lake, rich in species (many fish, eels, frogs, and shrimp) and rice crops. The unique hydrology of Tonlé Sap makes it one of the most fertile ecosystems on the planet. During half of the year, it flows southeast to the capital, Phnom Penh. But during the monsoon season, the Mekong's flow pushes it in the opposite direction, growing up to six times more, attracting many more fishermen and rice growers to its shores.
The border between Vietnam and Cambodia, dividing the Mekong Delta, has been the scene of multiple confrontations for centuries. In the 17th century, a Cambodian king married a Vietnamese princess and allowed the Vietnamese to annex some territories around the Mekong until they ended up occupying the so-called Lower Cambodia, leaving the neighboring country without direct access to the South China Sea, which is now one of the most important maritime highways for international trade.
The Donald Trump administration canceled 83% of USAID programs this year, which distributes humanitarian aid through health and emergency programs in 120 countriesLUCAS DE LA CAL / CRÓNICA / EL MUNDO
Cambodians have always harbored great resentment towards Vietnam for their loss of territory. During the French colonial protectorate of the 19th century, thousands of Vietnamese workers arrived in Cambodia to work on rubber plantations, eventually forming their own ethnic identity within the country after independence in 1953.
After the coup d'état by the Khmer Rouge, the Maoist rebels who took power in 1975 and exterminated a quarter of the population, many of these Vietnamese communities were exterminated. After the fall of the genocidal regime, the UN sent several supervisors to Cambodia to help this Southeast Asian country move away from dictatorship. A young former commander, Hun Sen, who had taken refuge in Vietnam, took the reins promising to defend democracy. But Hun ended up becoming another tyrant, and his party, the Cambodian People's Party, relegated thousands of Vietnamese families to live in the current legal limbo, revoking their rights to Cambodian citizenship and thus being able to aspire to live in a place that does not float on water.