A Change of Guard

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Saturday 20 November 2021

A New Chapter of Betrayal Is Being Written in Our History [repost]



 



Reproduced from KI Media
A New Chapter of Betrayal Is Being Written in Our History

26 June 2012
Op-Ed by Khmer Academy

'No stability, social development or economic progress can justify the loss of national sovereignty and territorial integrity. To believe otherwise is to succumb to treason, a misdeed that my conscience, and I trust yours too, can neither accept nor allow.'

OUR country is presently going through another dark moment of its history as we witness a new chapter of betrayal is being written. The authority has recently admitted that several villages, including the birth place of H.E. Heng Samrin, the current Chairman of the National Assembly, will be ceded as part of the Eastern border demarcation process. This is totally in contrast to what it has said, and unjustly prosecuted those who disagreed, for years that not a single millimeter of our lands would be lost.

The authority, with its justification, wants us to believe that due to the different accuracies found in maps with different scales, some adjustments along the border have to be made, thus unavoidably resulting in some villages on both sides being swapped. If that is really the case, why so far only villages on our side but none on the other side have been identified to the public? It is incomprehensible and unacceptable that the alleged errors and map inaccuracies only occur on our side. How can a village where the Chairman of the National Assembly and his siblings before him were born, raised and farmed belong to another country? Note that on the 6th of August 1966, Hanoi declared: "Thlok Trach village [is] on Cambodian territory". Why is it no longer the case?

Several other central questions with regard to the entire border demarcation process remain unanswered. The complete lack of transparency and public consultation since the beginning of the process only confirms the suspicion by some and allegation by others that our lands are being ceded to the neighbor, illegally and deliberately.

It is evident that the Eastern border demarcation constitutes an application of the so-called 1982 and 1985 treaties which were signed when our country was officially recognized by the U.N. as under occupation. As such, the entire demarcation and the treaties which form its basis are flawed; they are not only in violation of our sovereignty and constitution, but also in contrary to the known international laws.

'It is a mistake of historical proportions to assume that border conflicts can be resolved through a one-time land concession.'