Council of Ministers on the attack rather than replying to opposition MPs’ questions on border stakes

Xok An

10 March 2010
By S. Botum
Free Press Magazine
Translated from Khmer by Socheata
Click here to read the article in Khmer

No proper reply was provided to opposition MPs who demanded that the government provides the exact location of border posts no. 184, 185, 186 and 187, all of which are located in Samrong commune, Chantrea district, Svay Rieng province. Instead, the Council of Ministers provided a terse attack on those who questioned the government.

In a letter sent to Heng Xamrin dated 24 February, Xok An, the minister in charge of the Council of Ministers, indicated that, for this case, the government provided clarifications both in writing and verbally to the National Assembly, as well as through various information, and in particular, the government sent sVar Kim Hong to clarify the National Assembly on 24 December 2009.

Based on the facts above, Xok An said that even if the government tried to explain several times already, the SRP MPs act as if they did not know, did not hear and they continue to dwell on the same subject. This annoys the work of the government which is busy in resolving problems with neighboring countries.

Xok An’s reaction came after 4 SRP MPs, including Mrs. Ke Sovannroth, Mrs. Tioulong Saumura, Mr. Son Chhay and Mr. Men Sothavrin demanded on 16 February 2010 that the government shows the actual location of border posts 184, 185 , 186 and 187 which are located in Samrong commune, Chantrea district, Svay Rieng province.

The opposition MPs asked the following questions:

1- Are (or were) temporary border posts # 184, 185, 186 and 187 in Samraong commune, Chantrea district, Svay Rieng province, planted on the real border line or within Cambodia’s territory?

2- If those posts were planted on the real border line, why then did the Vietnamese authorities dig out or remove posts # 184, 186 and 187 and take them back to Vietnam only a few days after [National Assembly member] Sam Rainsy had pulled out post # 185 on 25 October 2009 as shown in photos attached herewith as evidence of the Vietnamese move?

3- Could the Government specify the geographic coordinates of those posts?

4- What is the difference, if any, between the geographic coordinates of those posts as specified by Sam Rainsy in documents attached herewith, and those as specified in government files [but so far considered as secret and confidential]?

5- Would the Government allow national and international observers to travel to the spot [Svay Rieng province] to make any needed measurements and to collect the geographic coordinates of those controversial posts with a GPS device, so as they could possibly act as independent witnesses in Sam Rainsy’s ongoing prosecution?

6- What is the Government’s assessment of the mapping techniques used by Sam Rainsy [who was assisted by map engineers and cartographers from several countries] showing in a irrefutable way that all those [so-called border] posts were in fact planted inside Cambodia’s territory, at a distance between 250 m and 500 m from the legal border with Vietnam as delineated on the official 1952 1/100,000 map which the Royal Cambodian Government [under then Prince Norodom Sihanouk] deposited at the United Nations in 1964?

In his letter, Xok An accused the opposition MPs the same way Hun Xen did in the past, stating that the opposition MPs attempted to deflect the border problem from the west to the east in order to create difficulties and interrupt the border delineation and border post installation between Vietnam and Cambodia which both countries are conducting properly according to the national and international law (sic!)
-----------
KI-Media note: Is installing border posts under an illegal treaty proper according the national and international law?