Norwegian witness fleeing the war in Cambodia

Picture of the inside of a wagon people are using to escape the bombing in northern Cambodia. Photo: Espen Jacobsen.

“What the fuck was that?” Norwegian Espen Jacobsen thought when a loud bang awoke him and his girlfriend Friday night at 4 a.m. on 19 December. The couple lives in Svay Sa in northern Cambodia, about two hours outside of Siem Reap.

“At first I thought my motorcycle had fallen down. But it was still standing, and the ground was shaking. That’s when we realized it had been a bomb,” Espen tells.

“We ran outside to see and were met by all our neighbours, who had also been awoken by the explosion. People were screaming, children were crying. The local police commissioner was there, and he was yelling at everybody to turn out all the lights. I have never seen our village that dark before.”

Espen and his girlfriend had, in the week leading up to Friday night’s bombing, been made gradually aware of the seriousness of the Thai-Cambodia war.

Over 150 refugees had taken refuge in the village’s local temple, and Espen and his girlfriend had closed down their restaurant and given all the food to the families fleeing the fighting further north.

“I had been naive and not very scared in the week leading up,” Espen recalls. “But now it has gotten too close to home, too close for comfort.”

On Sunday, 21 December, Espen, his girlfriend, and the girlfriend’s daughter packed up their necessities and took a bus to Siem Reap, hoping that the city has too many tourists for the fighting to spill over.

“We tried convincing more of my girlfriend’s family to come with us, but they can’t. They are farmers; they can’t leave their animals behind. That is their livelihood. Without it, they have nothing, so they chose to stay.”

The number of refugees in the village’s temple has also decreased. Many families have been invited to stay in empty rooms at the homes of the villagers. Many others have continued to head south, trying to put as much distance between them and the bombing campaigns as possible.

Families from the north have sought refuge in the local temple. Photo: Espen Jacobsen.

The online fundraiser that Espen put up to get financial help from friends and family back home in Norway is still being used to provide the refugees with food and resources.

Espen, his girlfriend, and the girlfriend’s daughter have settled in a guesthouse in Siem Reap. It is an unexpected expense, but they have booked it for a week, after which they are looking for something more long-term, but ideally they would return home.

“It’s an awful situation to be in. We don’t really know what to do. Right now, we are just taking it one day at a time,” Espen says.