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31st August 2022
09:31am BST
Via Facebook[/caption]
Many of his followers subsequently packed up and set off toward his farm. While it's not yet apparent how many people have flocked to his residence, it's believed to be between 15,000 and 20,000.
As reported on the Mail Online, Veasna is giving daily lectures from 1pm to 7pm, which are broadcast on loud speakers to the compound. Naturally, locals are pretty confused by the noise and have complained about the amount of public defecation.
Local authorities have since called for the doomsday cult members to disperse and return home but the community has largely ignored them despite threats of "appropriate legal action."
Veasna has also told police that he will assist them but barricades have since appeared to block the farm entrance.
"Even though the opposition has been allowed to resurrect to some extent, Cambodia is still very much marked by how this is a one-party mandate period," Astrid Norén-Nilsson, senior lecturer at Lund University's Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, told Vice. "Khem Veasna denounced politics and brought his followers with him on the journey to become a sort of millenarian social movement."
She added: "It evidently speaks to people in these globally uncertain and rather dark times."
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