Border: Sam Rainsy wrote to Norodom Sihanouk

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy (Photo: RFA)

Wednesday 17 March 2010
By A.L.G.
Cambodge Soir Hebdo
Translated from French by Tola Ek
Click here to read the article in French

In a letter dated March 16 sent to the ex-monarch, the opposition MP who is now in exile indicated that “top leading experts” whom he consulted in France agree with him on the Khmer-Viet border issue without providing further details.

In a letter written in French sent to King-Father from Paris, opposition leader Sam Rainsy reminded Norodom Sihanouk to the speech he gave in Beijing in 2005 about the border issue.

“Exactly five years ago, day for day, You declared from Beijing :

«[…] Our (present) Cambodia, represented by H.E. Var Kim Hong’s team (the chief negotiator for frontier issues nominated by Prime Minister Hun Sen), accepts to commit suicide by recognizing, even in the eyes of International law, that Cambodia has no precise frontiers.

The word “suicide” is not an exaggeration. A country which recognizes that it has no legal and precise frontiers is a dead country. »”

Sam Rainsy who was sentenced to two-year of jail time for uprooting stakes marking the border between Cambodia and Vietnam in Svay Rieng, is also currently being sued for “diffusion of false information” and “falsification of public documents.”

In his letter, Sam Rainsy indicated that “top leading experts” he consulted with in Europe (top research authorities and professors from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique – CNRS -, from the Institut Géographique National – IGN – and from the Federal Polytechnique School of Lausanne) agree with him on the Vietnamese “encroachment” in Cambodia.

On 22 February, sVar Kim Hong denied any such encroachment, claiming that Sam Rainsy used a 1984 datum to post coordinates on a map dated from 1960, thus the difference with the computation performed by the government border committee.

Without replying precisely on the datum issue, Sam Rainsy believes that the “scientific truth” “has put a stop to biased political talk and propaganda around the border issue” and that it would allow “to have the Khmer peasants freed, those who were put into prison because they dared protest again the confiscation of their rice-fields by the neighbouring country with the complicity of the local Cambodian authorities.”

I remind myself of the following words by Emile Zola, “The truth is coming to light. Nothing can stop it (…). Justice can only be in the truth,” Sam Rainsy added.