Thais Army limits a border with Cambodia after rising tensions

Thailand’s army has tightened control on the border with Cambodia. Thailand accused The neighboring country of it along the border to collect troops and equipment. A number of border posts would be according to local media Closedalthough Thailand said earlier to keep the border open. Thousands of people, including many Thai who were in the many casinos of the Cambodian border town of Poipet to gamblethere would have been stranded on Saturday.

Tensions between the two countries have been sustained in the last few days, after a Cambodian soldier died on 28 May in a firefight near Chong Bok, in an area near the three -country point with Laos on which Thailand and Cambodia have been disputed each other about the authority for decades.

The two countries share a country border of more than eight hundred kilometers, which was established by France in 1907 – the then colonizer of Cambodia. Thailand fought that limit later, and since then the conflict flares up regularly. A committee set up at the start of the century that has to look for a solution to the dispute has made little progress so far.

Nationalist songs

The conflict focuses on, among other things, the eleventh-century Hindu temple Preah Vihear, which In 1962 Cambodia was assigned by the International Court of Justice in The Hague. In 2013, it also acknowledged the Cambodian claim on the site on which the temple is located.

A few years earlier, in 2008, a violent conflict had erupted between the two countries after Cambodia had nominated the temple for the UNESCO World Heritage List. That lasted until the end of 2011, when Thailand and Cambodia agreed to withdraw their troops from the area. In the meantime, about twenty people had died on both sides.

However, the current tensions started about 150 kilometers away, near the Ta Muen Thom Temple, which is also in a disputed border area. There a group arrived there in February by soldiers, Cambodian guided who sang nationalist songs until they were stopped by Thai soldiers.

Nationalist sentiments were fueled in Thailand because of conversations that the Thai government wants to have with Cambodia about the joint exploitation of gas fields near the Thai holiday island of Koh Kood, which is also claimed by Cambodia. Thai opposition politicians fear That the government in Bangkok would be willing to make territorial concessions to Cambodia because of those negotiations in that dispute.

Warm tires

That suspicion is also fed by the good personal ties between the families who are at the helm in both countries. The current Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinatra of Thailand is the daughter of former leader Thaksin Shinatra, while in Cambodia their manet leads the government, the son of former Prime Minister and current chairman of the Cambodian Senate their senate.

Despite that warm relationship, according to Prime Minister Shinatra, the Thai army has been given the mandate to « confront » if necessary, she said according to the newspaper Bangkok Post After a meeting of the National Security Council, although it is always preferable to peaceful resources.

Her Cambodian colleague their manet said Saturday During a visit to a school in the border province Ratanakiri that he wants to find a solution through the bilateral border committee of both countries. He will meet on June 14, and according to a spokesperson for the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bangkok is also willing to discuss the issue there.

But if that does not produce anything, their manet will consider a new step to the International Court of Justice, which is not recognized by Thailand. Nevertheless, he assured his audience that Cambodia « will answer with military means if Thailand makes an armed raid, » said the Khmer Times.

On Friday, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, currently chairman of the ASEAN regional partnership, tried to appease the tensions between the two countries. He had spoken with both colleagues, he wrote on xand Thailand and Cambodia called to « take restraint (…) and to work on a peaceful solution. »

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