Cambodia must be wrong to claim her own property?

By Anonymous

Siam, later known as Thailand, came into existence and grew to its present day Thailand on former Khmer empire which lost its western provinces to advancing Siamese army. As a result, successive Khmer kings paid a vassal tribute to Bangkok until France came to exercise its protectorate over Cambodia from 1863 to 1953. France then started to negotiate with Siam for a definite border demarcation and delimitation between France's Indochina and Siam, and both had concluded a number of conventions and treaties (1904 and 1907) and many others. With regard to Cambodia, a Franco-Siamese border commission produced clearly marked maps and planted a number of border posts. In the process, three Cambodian provinces in north-north west were returned to Cambodia in exchange for a few Cambodian provinces, namely Trat, Chantaburi etc, in the south sea border were given to Thailand.

This part of history has been put in the dark so as to arouse Thai irredentist claims that all the territory west of the Mekong were Thai and Thailand were forced by France to unduly give a lot of Thai territory to Cambodia. The truth is, and remains that, it was Cambodia which had lost a great deal of land to Thailand. Yet Cambodia, a law abiding country, never claimed them back from Thailand, nor initiated any conflict with her neighbor. Then, in 1941, taking advantage of World War II with Japan’s occupation of French Indochina, Thailand annexed the western Cambodian provinces of Battambang, Siem Reap, Kompong Thom, but was forced to return them back to Cambodia under the Washington Treaty in 1946.

As if a prey had been taken away from its grip, all the Thai myth of land ownership has been building up to justify Thailand’s military occupation of some Cambodian lands, in particular the temple of Preah Vihear and its surrounding in 1954, soon after Cambodia acceded to independence in 1953. After years of unfruitful negotiations, Cambodia, under Prince Norodom Sihanouk, brought the case to The Hague International Court of Justice (ICJ) which rendered a verdict on 15 June 1962 in favor of Cambodia. The ICJ verdict was crystal clear when it referred to the Franco-Siamese treaties and border maps produced by Franco-Siamese Border Commission used ever since by both parties, as valid and legal international documents. Most importantly, and Thailand cannot deny it, was a “Dangrek Map”, known as “Annex 1”, which formed part of the 1962 ICJ decision. This “Annex 1” map is to this day crystal clear over the border lines between Thailand and Cambodia. Only Thai extremists, who become so obsessive and mad about Thai loss at the ICJ, who keep repeating until this day that the 1962 ICJ ruling recognized that only the temple belonged to Cambodia and not the ground surrounding it. Any honest person needs no doctorate degrees to appreciate the well-explained ICJ decision.

At the same period that the Thais had secretly produced their own map, drawn on the US war maps, intended to replace the “Annex 1” map, with a new border line showing the so-called 4.6km2 parcel of land surrounding Preah Vihear temple they claimed, as not a “contested area”, but as Thai territory, in flagrant violation of the 1962 ICJ verdict, a rarity in modern day world. This fact alone, and for the fact that they have used an illegal and unilateral map, is a violation of international laws and which constitutes an act of aggression and a casus belli.

Armed with this illegal map, the Thai irredentist ultra-nationalist group started to brainwash their fellow citizens, including young generation of scholars and to fool foreign governments, that Cambodia was encroaching on Thai territory. For instance, their representatives went around, with this illegal map, to fool UNESCO members when Preah Vihear temple was on the agenda of the World Heritage list. Obviously, their fabrication did not hold water and World Heritage Committee members just ignored it and unanimously approved the listing in 2008, thus reconfirming the 1962 ICJ decision in favor of Cambodia.

Many Thai irredentist groups, probably for their political survival, and to a certain extent for their own political interests, started to act like outlaws against the whole world and to started to provoke military conflicts with Cambodia, accusing Cambodia of having started the war! Bangkok media picked it up to fool the public that Phnom Penh started this war for political and election purposes. It must be the other way around when, in 2008, Bangkok was under street protests from both yellow and red shirts that paralyzed business and airports operations for a few weeks. Honest people cannot accept such a misleading story from the aggressor. But some biased and irresponsible media likes also to entertain this myth when, with an air of superiority, they belittled the temple as a “tiny, crumbling, 11th century-old ruins” claimed by both countries. UNESCO must then be wrong to list it as one of the World Heritage sites, and Cambodia must be wrong to claim it as her own property? Of course, the above is just a very condensed story showing how some bright people in Bangkok born with some inferiority complex, culturally speaking, spent their life to enlighten themselves by manipulating and distorting well known facts and history so as to demonize Cambodia and her past and present leaders.