Meanwhile, individual citizens have emerged as leading voices for freedom of expression in Cambodia, as in the
case of more than a dozen women from Phnom Penh’s Boeung Kak neighborhood who were arrested in 2012
after publicly protesting against forced eviction from their homes. Although the fight for these women was viewed
through the lens of housing rights, theirs also became a struggle for the right to speak freely – voices the state
attempted to muzzle by sending the women to prison.