Mon, 29 June 2015 ppp
Meas Sokchea and Shaun Turton
Analysis
School of Vice: Vietnam knows exactly who to bully and who to stay away from among its neighbours...
Cambodia must put down a marker somewhere, somehow if she is to halt this despicable age-old aggression, whatever the costs ...
Cambodia must put down a marker somewhere, somehow if she is to halt this despicable age-old aggression, whatever the costs ...
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More than five years ago, opposition leader Sam Rainsy stood on disputed land near the Vietnamese border and ripped a demarcation post from the ground in an act of defiance.
The government’s response to this bit of highly charged political theatre was swift and unsurprising. Convicted of charges including racial incitement and destruction of property, Rainsy was sentenced to two years in prison and fled into nearly four years of self-imposed exile.
“Now who are the foreigners and international organisations that support such an action?” Hun Sen mockingly said of Rainsy’s stunt at the time, seemingly dismissing out of hand any talk of encroachment.
Half a decade later, Rainsy’s nascent Cambodia National Rescue Party is still protesting alleged encroachment at the border, but amid shifting political winds, the government’s response has been markedly different.
In past weeks, its public rhetoric on the issue has increasingly put it in line with the opposition, something observers attribute to both domestic politics and China’s rising influence.
Yesterday, following an opposition-led delegation that on Sunday brawled with Vietnamese authorities and villagers after “inspecting” a Vietnamese-built road in disputed territory in Svay Rieng, Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak backed the group and condemned Vietnam’s use of force.
“It is the will of the people who love the nation,” Sopheak, quoted by local media, said of the group. “[I] oppose all uses of violence, because this violence is not an action that resolves problems, it makes problems more complicated.”