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| Thai soldiers, in red berets, train defense volunteers to use the shotguns at a village near the Thai-Cambodian border in Surin province, northeastern Thailand. (Photo: AP) |
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
By SIMON ROUGHNEEN
The Irrawaddy
Ou Virak, head of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, said that the fighting “appears to be a cynical political ploy on the part of both governments to satisfy nationalist sentiment.”
BANGKOK — Since Friday morning, fighting along the Thai-Cambodia border has left 12 soldiers dead and forced the evacuation of thousands of civilians on both sides of the frontier. This comes two months after four days of fighting left 11 people dead at a separate location along the border.
The latest bout of shelling began at around 6 am on Friday along the border where Thailand’s Surin Province faces Oddar Meanchey in Cambodia. Both sides blame each other for shooting first. Thailand says that Cambodia plans a ground offensive to take control of two temples, while Cambodia claims that its adversary has used chemical weapons and sent fighter aircraft into Cambodia’s airspace. Both sides deny the respective allegations.
It was the first fighting since February 4-7, when 12 people were killed near a 900-year-old Hindu temple called Preah Vihear. The temple was built by the same Khmer Empire that constructed Angkor Wat, the world’s largest religious structure. Angkor Wat draws around two million tourists per annum and sits near Siem Reap in Cambodia’s northwest.
In 1962, the International Court of Justice put Preah Vihear inside Cambodia. However Thai nationalists dispute the decision, with tensions intensifying after the site received World Heritage site status in 2008. The Thai government says that the land around the temple has not been demarcated, and that the status of the temple cannot therefore be denoted until the land issue is resolved.
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