Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Manet says that Cambodia is not afraid to use force if Thai soldiers violate the country’s sovereignty near a temple on the border between the two nations.
In a speech to the Cambodian Tycoon Association on Friday, the Cambodian leader referred to the recent dispute with Thai nationalists over the Ta Moan Temple, which sits on the border between Thailand’s Surin province and Cambodia’s Oddar Meanchey province.
“As a government, our priority is to adhere to peaceful resolution, using the basis of law and negotiation and our diplomacy, international law,” he said in the speech, according to a report by Radio Free Asia.
“But we will be ready at all times if there is the use of armed force to invade Cambodian territory,” he added. “Cambodia reserves the right to defend its sovereignty, using all means, including armed force.”
Ta Moan Thom temple has been a subject of contention since last month, when a group of Cambodian soldiers visited the temple and began singing the Cambodian national anthem. This prompted the Thai army to send a letter of complaint to Cambodia’s Military Region 4 on February 18 over what it described as “inappropriate behaviour.” The Thai government claims that the temple sits in Thai territory, even though the adjacent border has yet to be fully demarcated. It said that it permits Cambodians to visit the temple for worship “on the condition that they do not engage in any actions that could be interpreted as a territorial claim,” The Nation reported.
Since then, the dispute has become the subject of shouting matches between Cambodians and Thai nationalists on social media.
The conflict over the Ta Moan Temple has arisen due to incomplete border demarcations in the vicinity of the temple, which is perched on the Dangrek escarpment. The border was set by a treaty signed between Siam and French Indochina in March 1907, but it was never fully delimited and has been contested periodically by the governments of independent Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand.
The most explosive dispute between Cambodia and Thailand has taken place over Preah Vihear temple, an 11th-century Angkorian temple around 140 kilometers to the east of Ta Moan Thom temple. In 1962, the International Court of Justice ruled that the temple belonged to Cambodia, but this did not prevent the site from becoming the focus of deadly clashes between 2008 and 2011 – clashes that also spread to Ta Moan Thom in April 2011.
Ta Moan Thom Temple has once again become a subject of contention in the context of developments in Thai politics – in particular, the efforts of the Pheu Thai-led government to reopen negotiations with Phnom Penh over the two nations’ overlapping claims area (OCA) in the Gulf of Thailand. This has prompted accusations by Thai nationalists that this could force Thailand to cede Koh Kut, an island that has long been claimed by Cambodian nationalists.
For the time being, an armed clash over either dispute seems unlikely. From 2008 to 2011, Thailand was led by a royalist government that faced pressure from its “yellow shirt” nationalist foot soldiers to take a hard line on the Preah Vihear issue. The same is not true now, and Prime Minister Paetongtarn’s government has remained on relatively good terms with Hun Manet and his father Hun Sen, who remains in many respects the true locus of power in Cambodia.
Nonetheless, the recent tensions are a reminder that nationalism remains a potent force in much of Southeast Asia, such that even seeking to demarcate vague borders in good faith opens governments to the accusation that they are “selling out” the national interest. For this reason, such disputes are likely to remain unresolved, and to drift in and out of the political debate in both nations for the indefinite future.