Behind the Thai-Cambodia border dispute
And the latest stories trickling out of scam compounds.
Nationalistic fervor swept Cambodia this week after it was reported that a Cambodian soldier was killed along the border with Thailand, raising the specter of another armed conflict with Thailand — similar to the 2008-2011 military standoff over the Preah Vihear temple — and prompting Cambodia to claim it will take the dispute to the U.N.’s International Court of Justice.
The clash has been a classic case of he said, he said, in the armies-trading-public-statements sort of way. Here’s what we know:
Last Wednesday, Thai media reported that Cambodian soldiers had been digging a trench along contested land near the Chong Bok crossing when Thai soldiers asked them to leave the area. The Cambodian forces “misunderstood the situation and started using weapons, so Thai forces retaliated,” the Thai army spokesman said, leading to a 10-minute skirmish. The army didn’t report any casualties.
Later that day, though, the Cambodian Defence Ministry claimed that Thai soldiers started firing first, and that one Cambodian soldier — a man later identified as Suon Rorn, 48 — had been killed. The ministry added that Cambodian soldiers have used the site as an army base “for a long time” and claimed that it was Cambodian land. We weren’t able to verify the exact location of the gunfire or if it was along the disputed section of the border.
Soldiers from RCAF and the Bodyguard Unit deployed to the border with heavy weaponry, and the Thai military also announced its preparedness to respond to any escalation in the situation. Although the military tension eased after some harried phone calls, it only seems to have ramped up on the diplomatic front.
Senate President Hun Sen posted on Facebook over the weekend referring to “Thai extremists” and reignited emotions with reports that Thailand planned to block border crossings — a potential hit to Cambodia’s reliance on Thai imports. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also issued a sharply worded statement demanding an immediate investigation into the “fatal and unlawful act.”
Thai nationalists are meanwhile skeptical of the Shinawatras, after Paetongtarn talked about her close ties to Cambodia’s ruling families, and have warned her against ceding any land to Cambodia. Her father and former prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, is close to Hun Sen; the former Cambodian prime minister was one of the first people to meet Thaksin on his return to Thailand from exile.
Meanwhile, Cambodian lawmakers — in an unprecedented move — used an ongoing joint session of parliament on Monday to vote on sending the issue again to the International Court of Justice.
So how did we get here?
The French and Siamese had two treaties over the border: one in 1904, and the other in 1907. The first treaty set out the rough guidelines of marking the border through a bilateral commission.
Here is the guideline, also called Article 1 of the treaty:
The frontier between Siam and Cambodia starts, on the left shore of the Great Lake, from the mouth of the river Stung Roluos, it follows the parallel from that point in an easterly direction until it meets the river Prek Kompong Tiam, then, turning north- wards, it merges with the meridian from that meeting-point as far as the Pnom Dang Rek mountain chain. From there it follows the watershed between the basins of the Nam Sen and the Mekong, on the one hand, and the Nam Moun, on the other hand, and joins the Pnom Padang chain the crest of which it follows eastwards as far as the Mekong. Upstream from that point, the Mekong remains the frontier of the Kingdom of Siam, in accordance with Article I of the Treaty of 3 October 1893.
In other words, the 1904 agreement doesn’t make an explicit mention of Preah Vihear temple and states that in the Dangrek Mountains — the location of the current border dispute — the border should follow the watershed line. By early 1907, the commission reported it had surveyed the border under Article 1, but there is no official communication to show that the Siamese and French members of the commission agreed on where the frontier lay in the Dangrek.
But 1907 is where things get interesting. The Siamese and French signed a new treaty which, first, ceded Battambang Siem Reap and Sisophon (now Banteay Menachey and Oddar Meanchey) to the French. In effect, any surveying done for the west and northwest borders based on the 1904 treaty was annulled.
Then another commission was set up to do more surveying. When it was time to draw the maps, French mapmakers — endorsed by their Siamese counterparts — came up with 11 maps. In the map delineating part of the Dangrek mountain range border, the proposed border seemingly deviated from the watershed in a few places, including at the Preah Vihear temple, which is located around 50 km west of the Chong Bok crossing where last week’s dispute took place.
While the Thais didn’t protest initially, they made a stink as soon as soon as they did their own survey of the land in 1930s, and then occupied the temple in 1954 to claim it — right after Cambodia got independence from France. The ICJ went on to rule in 1962 and 2013 that the temple complex is indeed Cambodia’s.
This week, Hun Manet has indicated that Cambodia wants the ICJ to adjudicate on Ta Moan Thom, Ta Moan Toch, and Ta Krabei temples and the Mom Tei area, near the Chong Bok border crossing. (The Ta Moan temple was in the news in February when Thai soldiers prevented Cambodian soldiers from singing the national anthem at the contested site).
Thailand responded on Wednesday and reiterated that Thailand has the right to defend itself and — in response to Cambodia’s “wish to resort to a judicial mechanism or a third party on this matter” — it preferred to use existing bilateral border mechanisms to resolve the dispute in a scheduled June 14 meeting.
Importantly, the previous ICJ rulings don’t pertain to other contested border areas, such as Koh Kut island in the Gulf of Thailand last year, which re-emerged as a conflict last year, though the 1907 treaty clarified maritime borders and says that Koh Kut is part of Thailand.
So here is the bottom line: Cambodia says the 1907 maps should be followed to adjudicate border disputes. Thailand says it never accepted the 1907 maps and that they violate the essence of the 1904 guidelines, which they want to be the basis of any delimitation process. The ICJ has only weighed in on Preah Vihear, leaving these other disputes open for bilateral fighting.
We don’t know if Cambodia will file an ICJ complaint or if the two countries can use existing border mechanisms to resolve the more-than-a-century long set of disputes, but it does keep nationalist fervor ramped up in both countries — and with it, the potential for further violence, à la the burning of the Thai embassy in 2003 or the 2008-2011 conflict that saw the deaths of around three dozen soldiers, injured many others and uprooted the lives of people living in the firing line.
In Politics:
— Amid the border dispute, Prime Minister Hun Manet squeezed in a trip to Tokyo for a media event, delivering a keynote speech at Nikkei’s “Future of Asia” event.
— The conflict at the border became a way for Cambodia’s patronage system to extract some cash from the elite: The monies came rolling in from Kith Meng, Leng Navatra, and Notorious LYP.
— Cambodia reported that it repaid $240 million in foreign debt for the first three months of the year.
— U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is expected to visit the controversial Ream Naval Base when a U.S. ship docks there later this year.
— A newspaper publisher and two others were charged with demoralizing the armed forces for filming a video where they spoke about the differences between frontline soldiers and high-ranking military personnel during the skirmish with Thailand. The case is similar to former minor party leader Sourn Serey Ratha, who was convicted for saying Cambodian generals slept in AC rooms while making lowly soldiers fight their battles during a 2017 conflict with Laos.
— Cambodians in Ratanakiri and Mondulkiri are being forcibly displaced to make way for the Srepok 3 hydropower dam, which is being developed by Kith Meng’s Royal Group.
In Scams and Human Trafficking:
— The Interior Ministry finally responded to trafficking expert Jacob Sims’ report on scamming, claiming the report lacks evidence and is slanderous. It also denied Interior Minister Sar Sokha was linked to the notorious Jinbei casino.
— Interior Ministry and anti-scam committee official Sok Phal claimed that around 24,000 people had been arrested and deported from 47 scam and fraud compounds since August 2022. However, in this story, he said 5,000 individuals have been arrested in relation to online scams in the last two years.
— Twenty Japanese nationals were allegedly among a group of roughly 50 people arrested for a suspected fraud operation in Poipet.
— A U.S. embassy official said the Americans want to help Cambodia with online scams, but the U.S. government (and Elon Musk) shut down all anti-trafficking projects in the country with the closure of USAID.
— Two people were found in shallow graves not far from O’Smach, which is home to major scam operations.
— The Cambodian government said close to 150 women have been rescued after being trafficked to China. Read more about so-called “China brides” here.
— Looking beyond Cambodia, the Sydney Morning Herald ran a series of stories on scam compounds in Myanmar on the Thai border, notably the use of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites at suspected compounds.
See you next week!