Coming face to face with war in a wildlife sanctuary

A Singaporean public health expert and his family were volunteering in Cambodia when a Thai jet attacked. He recounts the suffering of the locals.

- Teo Yik Ying

Thursday, Dec 11. My family and I were at work at the Cambodia Wildlife Sanctuary, where we were part of a team of volunteers caring for displaced and rescued elephants, alongside a whole menagerie of farm animals, including dogs and cats.

We knew that a border conflict had erupted between Thailand and Cambodia, but we felt a world removed from it and the nearest hostilities were 100km away. Or so we thought.

The team had spent the morning scrubbing the stagnant pools in the animal enclosures, before moving into the early afternoon cutting grass and sugar cane for the elephants. The skies were blue, the sun was shining, and the mood was exuberant.

On our tractor ride back to the sanctuary, sitting atop cut grass and sugar cane, villagers we passed were casually snacking on fried crickets and even offered some to us with cheerful generosity. We stopped at two small roadside shops to buy fresh coconuts as a treat for ourselves and the sanctuary staff.

Just minutes after we returned to the sanctuary, as we were stripping leaves from the freshly cut sugar cane, the roar of a fighter jet tore through the sky, followed by the unmistakable boom of an explosion. Almost immediately, screams erupted from the direction of the wooden huts where the local staff lived. The women screamed in terror and ran towards their huts, fearing that a bomb may have struck their children.

The children were safe, crying from shock and fear rather than from physical injury, but the relief was painfully short-lived. A second, and then a third, explosion sent tremors through the ground beneath our feet. I still remember Sokchan, the leader of the local staff, crying out, “What are they doing! They are not supposed to be here!”