Researcher Says Border Posts "Misplaced" in Eastern Cambodia
Presenting the initial findings of months of research trips along
Cambodia’s eastern border, academic [and tool of Vietnamese puppet govt] Sok Touch said on Thursday that a
stretch of land in Tbong Khmum province had been occupied by Vietnam due
to border posts being misplaced [the most understated usage in the history of the word!] during the French colonial era.
Mr. Touch told a press conference at the Royal Academy of Cambodia
that swaths of land in the border province had long been controlled by
Vietnam despite falling inside Cambodian territory, according to
constitutionally mandated maps he is using in his research.
“The land belongs to Cambodia. But I asked people around there, and
they told me that Vietnamese people have cultivated rubber plantations
and cassava on the land for a long time,” he said.
Amid an opposition campaign in mid-2015 accusing the CPP of ceding
land to Vietnam, the government tasked Mr. Touch, a scholar at the Royal
Academy of Cambodia, with leading a group of researchers in conducting
an investigation into the placement of border posts.
The academic said the group’s initial findings showed that Vietnam
had not been a fair partner in bilateral efforts to demarcate the 1,270
km of shared border.
“Vietnam did not respect the agreement between the two countries,”
Mr. Touch said, noting an episode last year in which Vietnamese citizens
and soldiers sprayed toxic chemicals on crops grown by Cambodian
farmers near Tbong Khmum’s Memot district [a concession because the violent facts are in your face blatant!]
“Why—when Cambodian farmers were doing cultivation—did they spray
chemicals to kill the plantation?” he said. “Vietnam has been
cultivating on thousands of hectares in Cambodia, but Cambodian farmers
never spray chemicals to kill the Vietnamese plantations.”
Mr. Touch said that five posts along the border in Tbong
Khmum—numbered 94, 95, 106, 107 and 108—were misplaced, with some
planted up to 150 meters inside Cambodia, effectively ceding about 100
hectares of territory.
The vast majority of the posts along the 500 km of border he visited,
however, were within a few meters of their proper location, he
explained, adding that his team’s research would be finished next year,
with a book on its findings to be published by 2018.
“The opposition party created problems because they affirmed that
they had the correct maps but only gave us 24 maps,” he said, adding
that he was prepared to defend himself against claims by opposition
lawmaker Um Sam An that his research was inaccurate.
“If my bet is wrong, I dare to bet my life. But if he loses, I only demand a bottle of wine,” Mr. Touch said.
The academic also noted that the research had not been without its travails.
“A colleague on my researching team almost drowned in the river and I
suddenly went to save him, and we nearly died together at that time,”
he said.
Var Kimhong, chairman of the government’s border affairs committee,
declined to comment on Mr. Touch’s findings regarding border posts being
placed well inside Cambodian land.
“I dare not to conclude that this is wrong because we need to clearly see the posts on the land,” he said.
Son Chhay, a senior opposition lawmaker, said he did not believe Mr.
Touch was the right person to be carrying out the research in the first
place.
“I don’t think Sok Touch has any education—any real knowledge—in how
to work on the border issue,” he said. “Maybe Cambodia needs to bring in
international experts to help sort this out.”
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