Cambodia & Chronicle: Preah Vihear, the conflict in historical perspective
- Chroniqueur
- Jul 14
- 7 min read
In 2009, shocked by the way the international press was covering the conflict surrounding the Preah Vihear temple, I published an opinion piece denouncing the injustice done to Cambodia. Fifteen years later, in 2025, nothing has changed: Thailand, still undermined by political divisions, continues to seek national unity... at the expense of its neighbor. Even today, it continues to kill.
A Cambodian soldier has just been killed. Another victim of a cynical and repeated strategy rooted in deep-seated hatred and contempt. The same forces that, on June 8, 1979, led the Thai army to commit a horrific mass crime: the Dangrek massacre.
On that day, in Nong Chan, 45,000 Cambodian refugees were torn from their camp. They were stripped, stripped naked, and forced onto a mined path at the foot of the Preah Vihear temple. The Thai soldiers knew. They knew that the Khmer Rouge had booby-trapped the path. Yet they forced men, women, and children to walk along it. Those who hesitated were shot. Others were thrown into the void. Three days of agony for the survivors. Three thousand dead. Seven thousand missing. And for a long time, the smell of bodies left to the scavengers haunted the place.
When such an act of barbarism has marked history, is it not indecent today for the same Thai army to come and claim, with weapons in hand, a few Khmer temples in defiance of international law?
How can a mere regional general like Boonsin Padklang impose his will, threaten a sovereign country, and lead an entire nation toward escalation? Is he pursuing personal ambitions? Does he believe himself inspired by aging leaders elsewhere who dream of annexing their neighbors?
I love Thailand. I appreciate its people. But I cannot remain silent in the face of this stubborn refusal to acknowledge the facts, to ignore the decisions of the International Court of Justice, and to make Cambodia a scapegoat amid the thousands of deaths left behind by the Thai army.
Reading the English-language press in Bangkok, one is frequently struck by a blatant lack of neutrality on the Preah Vihear temple issue. Thailand's position is taken without nuance, and it is even claimed that the Cambodians are the real troublemakers, as well as the first to fire...My concern for the truth and my friendship with Cambodia compel me to attempt to clarify a few historical points concerning relations between the two countries.
Historical background
Coming from southern China, it was towards the end of the 9th century that those who would become the Siamese, then the Thais, began to settle on the northern marches of the Khmer Empire, north of the Dangrek Mountains.They gradually grew in strength until they became the Thai Kingdom of Ayutthaya, which sacked Angkor twice, in 1351 and 1431, each time deporting a large part of the Khmer population and imposing its suzerainty over Cambodia, whose entire provinces it annexed over time. Atlantis on borrowed time," swallowed up by Siam to the northwest and Vietnam to the east, Cambodia was simply going to disappear.
Aware of this, King Ang Duong sought the intervention of Napoleon III of France in 1853. When the Siamese learned of this, they blocked the alliance treaty, and it was Ang Duong's son, King Norodom, who finally signed the Protectorate Treaty with France in 1863.The British had a strong influence over Siam, but the Franco-British agreement of July 14, 1884, recognized the Mekong basin as a “French zone,” which did not prevent the Siamese from cutting off the basin and advancing through Laos.
These repeated encroachments led, in July 1893, to a French flotilla sailing up the Menam River to Bangkok. France then blockaded the coast, forcing the Siamese court to renounce all claims to the left bank of the Mekong, while we held the provinces of Chantaboun and Paknam as hostages. Naval troops occupied these regions until the 1904 Convention, which returned the coastal province of Koh Kong and that of Steung Treng to Cambodia, along with the regions of Melou Preï and Tonle Repou, territories ceded by Siam to Laos and reintegrated into Cambodia by France.This 1904 Convention led to the 1907 Treaty, in which, in exchange for the return to Siam of the provinces of Trat, Chantaboun, and the territory of Dan Sai in the present-day province of Loei, King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) ceded the provinces of Battambang, Sisophon, and Siem Reap to France, which returned them to Cambodia.
When King Sisowath was finally able to go to Angkor to take possession of these undoubtedly Khmer lands, he declared that this was “the greatest glory of his reign.”But the Siamese never gave up. Taking advantage of France's defeat by Germany in World War II, they immediately violated the non-aggression pact signed with France on June 12, 1940.Thai Prime Minister Phibun then organized a series of nationalist and anti-French demonstrations in Bangkok, followed by a series of border skirmishes along the Mekong River. The Thai air force, superior in numbers, bombed Vientiane, Sisophon, and Battambang with impunity during the day. The French air force attempted retaliatory raids, but the damage caused was much less. In December 1940, Thailand occupied Pak-Lay and Bassac.
Offensive
In early January 1941, Bangkok launched an offensive against Laos and Cambodia. The Franco-Indochinese resistance was in place, but most units were outmatched by the better-equipped Thai forces (20 tanks on the French side, 134 on the Siamese side). The Thais quickly occupied Laos, while in Cambodia the French resistance was stronger. On January 16, France launched a large counteroffensive led by the 5th REI (Foreign Infantry Regiment) on the villages of Yang Dang Khum and Phum Préav, where the fiercest fighting of the war took place. The counterattack was blocked and ended in retreat, but the Thais were unable to pursue the French forces, their tanks having been pinned down by French anti-tank guns (which, due to a lack of adequate resources, had been pulled into position by oxen). With the situation on land critical for France, Admiral Decoux gave the green light for an operation against the Thai navy. The order was given to all available warships to attack in the Gulf of Thailand. On the morning of January 17, 1941, the “occasional group” attacked Thai ships at Koh Chang. Although the enemy fleet greatly outnumbered them, the French navy's operation ended in complete victory. At the end of the battle, much of the Thai war fleet was destroyed.
A brief respite
However, on January 24, the final air battle took place when Siem Reap airport was hit by a raid of Thai bombers.Japan quickly intervened in the conflict on behalf of the Thais, imposing an armistice and then a peace treaty on May 9, whereby France ceded the Cambodian provinces of Battambang and Siem Reap, as well as the Laotian provinces of Champassak and Sayaburi, a territory of more than 50,000 km2 inhabited by 420,000 people.The territories annexed to Cambodia were not returned by Thailand, under international pressure (Washington Treaty), until November 1947.
However, in 1953, when Cambodia had barely gained independence, Thai troops invaded Preah Vihear, drove out the Khmer officials and raised their national flag. Nine years later, in 1962, Prince Sihanouk's consummate skill secured an international court ruling and the Thais were forced to back down, but the respite was to be short-lived, as war was coming and Preah Vihear would be engulfed in it.
Let us skip over the successive occupations of the site by the warring armies and the surrender of Lon Nol's last troops to the Khmer Rouge in May 1975. The worst moment in its history was a horrific holocaust orchestrated thirty years ago by the Thai army itself!
Atrocious staging
Shortly after the defeat of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, Thailand was overwhelmed by Cambodian refugees and, to show the world that it could not manage this phenomenon alone without money, it planned an atrocious staging. On the morning of Friday, June 8, 1979, 110 buses lined up in front of the Nong Chan camp, which housed tens of thousands of Cambodian refugees. They were told that they were going to be transferred to a camp better equipped to receive them, and all these survivors of the Khmer Rouge genocide were sent back to hell...Far from Nong Chan, the site of Preah Vihear had been chosen deliberately, in revenge for the loss of the temple in 1962. With a steep jungle-covered cliff and thousands of mines, there was no way out...
Realizing what was about to happen, the unfortunate refugees had to be forced out of the buses at gunpoint. Horrific scenes unfolded: arriving at night, bus after bus, the Cambodians were pushed like cattle between two rows of soldiers on a narrow path, after being stripped of all their money. The soldiers wielded their weapons like clubs and shot those who refused to leave the path. Terrified of stepping on the countless mines (laid by the Khmer Rouge four years earlier), the refugees tried by any means to stay on the path, but further up, more and more unfortunate souls were pushed forward and people were eventually forced to walk through the minefield.
It took the survivors three days to cross this expanse of death, thirst, and hunger, amid rotting corpses and wounded people writhing in pain. An estimated 45,000 Cambodians were expelled in this way. For several days, they were transported to hell in a steady stream of buses, but it is impossible to estimate the number of victims, as the Khmer Rouge kept no records...
This horrific chapter of history is too little known, and we tend to remember only the “Amazing Thailand” of tourist brochures. The wrongs committed by the Thai against the Khmer must be remembered, not to pit one people against another, but so that justice can finally be done.The Cambodians are not attacking anyone; they are too aware of the imbalance of power. All they have is courage and determination to defend their country, but Thailand has too many internal problems not to try to exploit the myth of the Sacred Union against the barbarism of its neighbor. The deaths of the past will change nothing.
Unfortunately, this tragedy is far from a happy ending. The Americans hate Hun Sen too much to reason with their Thai partners, and as for the French, it is unlikely that they will once again send gunboats to Bangkok...
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