For the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cambodia was in the enviable position of having one of the world’s lowest numbers of infections.
Now, the South-East Asian nation is not only trying to control its most serious outbreak, it’s dealing with a simultaneous crisis, with tens of thousands of people under lockdown running out of food.
The Cambodian government has declared areas with the most coronavirus cases to be “red zones” and banned people from leaving their homes except for medical reasons. That means people in these zones are not even allowed to go out to buy food and other basic necessities.
Most of the red zones are in the capital Phnom Penh and the nearby city of Takhmao.
Many of those who have broken the rules have been beaten with rattan canes or arrested — actions police have defended “to save lives”.
