Preah Vihear and the old map we should never have agreed to
July 23, 2011
By Nophakhun Limsamarnphun
The Nation
The International Court of Justice issued an order last Monday for both Thailand and Cambodia to withdraw their military from a disputed border area covering a total of 17.3 square kilometres.
The demilitarised zone consists of 8.5 sq km of Thai territory and 8.8 sq km of Cambodian territory.
This includes a Thai portion of 4.6 sq km next to the Phra Viharn/Preah Vihear temple which was earlier listed unilaterally by Cambodia as a World Heritage Site.
Back in 1962, the court ruled that the ancient Hindu temple belonged to Cambodia, but it stopped short of making any ruling on border demarcation, which went beyond its authority.
Due to the legacy of colonial rule in Indochina, border demarcation has been a highly sensitive issue between Thailand and Cambodia ever since the 1962 ruling.
To date, there has been no mutually acceptable demarcation along the border between the two countries.
In 1994, Thailand and Cambodia attempted to start the process of proper demarcation and both countries entered into a memorandum of understanding in a bid to resolve the issue.
However, Dr Sompong Sujaritkul, a former Thai lawyer who was involved in the Thai-Cambodian border case nearly 50 years ago, recently cautioned that the 1994 MoU contains several dangerous points for Thailand.
First, the 1994 MoU uses a map with a scale of 1 to 200,000 originally and unilaterally created by France during its time as colonial power in Indochina in the 19th century.
This map was a distortion as it encroached on Thai territory in defiance of the 1907 treaty signed by France and Thailand.
Respecting the dictates of this map could result in a loss of 1.8 million rai of Thailand's territory, according to Dr Sompong.
Second, he cautioned that another danger was hidden in Thailand's failure to object to the use of this map in the decades prior to 1994.
This failure led to the lack of a crucial clause in the Thai-Cambodian MoU of 1994, which meant there was no protection against Thai territorial interests being violated by subsequent legal interpretations in the international arena.
Dr Sompong suggested that the 1994 MoU should have contained a protective clause stating that Thailand would not accept the dictates of anything beyond the 1907 treaty between then-Siam and France, which had colonised Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.
Instead, as the matter stands, the country is now at risk of losing more land territory to Cambodia if future legal interpretations are based on the unilaterally created map that uses the scale of 1 to 200,000.
In the final analysis, it is in Thailand's best interest to nullify the 1994 MoU with Cambodia.
In April this year, Cambodia asked the ICJ - the highest court of the United Nations - for an order for Thailand to immediately and unconditionally withdraw its troops from what it described as parts of Cambodian territory situated in the area of Preah Vihear Temple.
Cambodia also asked the court to issue a ban on all military activity by Thailand, and that Thailand refrain from any act or action which could interfere with the rights of Cambodia or aggravate the dispute.
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