TO THE ATTENTION OF HIS MAJESTY SAMDECH PREAH NORODOM SIHANOUK OF CAMBODIA
The Royal Residence in Beijing
The People’s Republic of China
The Royal Residence in Beijing
The People’s Republic of China
Paris, March 16, 2010
Your Majesty,
I have the honour of informing you about the following good news: Top leading experts who I have consulted in Europe (top research authorities and professors from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique – CNRS -, from the Institut Géographique National – IGN – and from the Federal Polytechnique School of Lausanne) confirm the validity of what we all know and of what I recently denounced, namely the displacing of the border posts by Vietnam to the detriment of Cambodia.
In spite of the denial of the current Cambodian governmental authorities, and in spite of their acts of repression towards Khmer patriots who dare to denounce the infringement of the territorial integrity of Cambodia by our powerful Eastern neighbours, no one can contest the reality of the facts any longer.
In the difficult circumstances which prevail currently in Cambodia, I remind myself of the following words by Emile Zola, “The truth is coming to light. Nothing can stop it (…). Justice can only be in the truth.”
The scientific truth has now shined forth in the eyes of the whole world. This truth has put a stop to biased political talk and propaganda around the border issue. This truth is based on the examination of all the geographical maps which are available and which show the real delineation of the frontier between Cambodia and Vietnam – notably the official maps of Cambodia that You had deposited at the United Nations in March 1964 and which are universally recognized. The truth is also based on the most modern investigation methods which did not exist in the 1980s when our neighbouring country forced the puppet Khmer authorities to sign illegal and unjust border treaties.
Thanks to the analysis of the maps, the use of which has been recently facilitated by their digitization, thanks to the record of the precise geographical coordinates of all the important points of the territory through the means of GPS, thanks to very clear satellite images which are accessible to everyone and enable the visualization of the frontier markings in any zone, thanks to the use of specific software programs which allow instant highly complicated geodesy and mapping calculations, and thanks to communication and exchange possibilities on the Internet network, we can at last render justice to our Homeland and to the Khmer people.
We will now be able to have the Khmer peasants freed, those who were put into prison because they dared protest again the confiscation of their rice-fields by the neighbouring country with the complicity of the local Cambodian authorities. We will be able to give back the ancestral land to our peasants so that they can live with dignity on legal Cambodian territory.
In my quality of an elected representative of the Khmer people and in my personal name, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to You as well as my boundless admiration for Your clear-sighted initiative which consisted in depositing the official Cambodian maps at the United Nations at the glorious time of Sangkum Reastr Niyum : This has allowed our country to obtain international recognition of its boundaries as inherited from the French colonization.
Since then You have never stopped defending the principle of the inviolability of our terrestrial and maritime frontiers by many other initiatives. This has led the Khmer people to love You and to respect You as the Father of Cambodia’s Territorial Integrity, in parallel to Your other titles as Father of National Independence and Father of the Nation.
Exactly five years ago, day for day, You declared from Beijing :
«The SRV (Socialist Republic of Vietnam) has “created” new frontiers (to its own benefit) by building, in the decades of 1980 and 1990-2000, “gates” and canals which are well inside our frontiers of 1963-1969.
Our (present) Cambodia, represented by H.E. Var Kim Hong’s team (the chief negotiator for frontier issues nominated by Prime Minister Hun Sen), accepts to commit suicide by recognizing, even in the eyes of International law, that Cambodia has no precise frontiers.
The word “suicide” is not an exaggeration. A country which recognizes that it has no legal and precise frontiers is a dead country. »
It is high time that our present rulers in Phnom Penh should remember your noble warning or that the Khmer nation should wake up and react to ensure its survival.
I beg your Majesty to accept the expression of my highest respect and unwavering loyalty.
[signature]
Sam Rainsy
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