Claim: Cambodia is using ancient temples as military bases, building bunkers and breaching the UNESCO principles on heritage sites.
Conclusion: Misleading. The temple in question was Prasat Ta Krabay/Prasat Ta Khwai, which is not a UNESCO World Heritage Site but an ancient Khmer temple located near the Thai-Cambodian border.
Rating: Misleading — 
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After Thailand and Cambodia agreed to a ceasefire with the establishment of an ASEAN-led monitoring system, a viral claim is surfacing online. Social media users are sharing pictures of a Cambodian soldier inside a temple, accusing Cambodia of using it as a military base.
Verified X user ‘Mr_Whathappened’ shared such a claim on 31 July 2025 which gained around 41,000 views. The post shared the picture of the Cambodian soldier and listed several international conventions which were allegedly broken by this act.
Find the tweet here:
Condemn Cambodia’s Actions! Sacred Heritage Site Turned into Military Base — A Clear Violation of International Conventions
The image shown is undeniable evidence: Cambodia has militarized an ancient temple — a cultural heritage site over a thousand years old — by turning it… pic.twitter.com/pwsSwyhWQz
— Mr.Hap (@Mr_Whathapened) July 31, 2025
Other users have made similar claims on Facebook which can be viewed here
FACT CHECK
DigitEYE India decided to investigate this claim and discovered that old images were being reposted. We conducted a reverse image search of the image in the claim and traced its earliest roots.
The second image of the collage was first shared by users in the month of April. For instance, Facebook user ‘Korakot Ketkaew’ shared this on 30 April 2025, accusing the Cambodian soldiers of using the temple as a warbase. Find the post here
By conducting a reverse image search on the top image of the collage, we learned that the temple in question was Prasat Ta Krabay/Prasat Ta Khwai. Prasat Ta Krabay is not a UNESCO World Heritage Site but an ancient Khmer temple located near the Thai-Cambodian border. These Khmer temples have been a point of conflict for decades between Thailand and Cambodia.
While we did not find any solid evidence apart from the top picture shared in the collage, both nations militarized temple areas. For instance, a 2011 BBC report described Cambodian troops turning Preah Vihear into an “armed camp” with strategic vantage points.
On the other hand, a report by CNN published on 24 July 2025 accounts for the damage caused by Thailand. The report highlights how Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts has expressed its “strongest condemnation of the aggression” after the Preah Vihear temple, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site was targeted. View a snippet from the report below –
Other reports on this issue like that by Al Jazeera and The New Indian Express published on 9 August 2025 describe mutual accusations. The fragile ceasefire seems to be crumbling and troops from both the nations often fire at these ancient military temples.
Thus, the claim is misleading as it uses an old image, portrayed as a recent one. While other temples around the Emerald Triangle region have been points of warfare, there is no solid evidence to confirm whether Prasat Ta Krabay/Prasat Ta Khwai is occupied by Cambodian soldiers.
