On the border encroachment issue

Yuon soldiers roam free on the encroached land

Thursday, December 17, 2009
Op-Ed posted by anonymous reader MP

Every time the border encroachment issue arises, the CPP leadership is quick to deflect public attention and Opposition criticism from its dubious and collaborative role in this sorry saga. Instead of debating as to which map is more appropriate for demarcation purposes, or why Opposition critics have not come up with a more viable map of their own, if the latter are not happy with the work of the border committee and so forth, why not allow the whole process to be scrutinized and assessed publicly and transparently? Who would lose out from such an open, democratic vetting? Not the Khmer people or the nation, surely? At the very least, owners of the land in question themselves should be fully informed of the committee’s relevant plans and procedures, their express consent should be sought prior to any joint decision being taken to carry out the committee’s work.

What if the border committee itself is being led by technically incompetent individuals or its chairperson? One hears VN has even offered to train Khmers on border mapping. No prize for guessing what manner of knowledge would be disseminated to the students here.

On the other hand, the technical nature and complexities of border mapping has frequently been used to bar and rebuff critics from gaining inroads into the committee's work. However, even this would not matter too much were it not for the fact that national integrity is at stake, and rice farmers' lands are being threatened.

Up to now, no villagers have lost their land? Really? Khmer farmers along the border with VN have been reported to have been forcibly removed from their ancestral land since the early 1990s and beyond. It is a slight blessing that this latest incursion into Khmer land comes in the form of wooden stakes (which are illegal objects planted on private property), and by themselves these poles may not seem a great deal, until, that is, one recalls the incremental and insidious practices of Vietnamese expansion of past and present:

• First, establish legal-physical presence in the given territory tentatively, either by means of leasing or temporary holding.
• Second, populate the land with labourers and provide them with the necessary economic incentives to work it and derive long-term self-sufficiency from their occupation.
• Third, provide the occupiers with arms and security protection in event of their lease being revoked. These stages would then be repeated elsewhere until new territory is fully acquired and entrenched under state protection.

Attention should also be given to other remote border regions such as Rattanakiri, Mondulkiri, Kratie (Kraches) and K Cham, where there might not be farmers to cry foul.

As usual, it is not so much what has been agreed on the map as such that matters, but rather it is these moving realities on the grounds that really count.
MP