Pailin authority chased out Thai soldiers trespassing into Cambodian territories

04 April 2009
By Sophal Mony
Radio Free Asia
Translated from Khmer by Heng Soy
Click here to read the article in Khmer

Cambodian government force in Pailin province chased out about 10 back-clad Thai soldiers from Cambodian territories after these soldiers trespassed 300 meters into Khmer territories.

Pha Thea, the Cambodian official in charge of border issues, indicated on Saturday 04 April that about 10 Thai black-clad soldiers from unit 547 based on O’Namron, Chanbury crossed the border and penetrated into Cambodian territories at Tuol Romdeng, next to border posts number 66 and 67 in Pailin province.

Pha Thea added that Thai soldiers trespassed into Cambodia between 9 and 10AM on 03 April, following the 7AM clash in Veal Entry, Preah Vihear province, on that same day. However, Cambodian border troops from unit 821 chased them out of the area.

Pha Thea said: “We forced them to go back, they should hurry back. They did not say anything and they did not do anything, after we told them, they pulled back. They came in for a while.”

According to Pailin province authority, Thai black-clad soldiers from unit 547 did not indicate the reason of their trespassing, they only agreed to pull out from Khmer territories after they were chased out by Khmer soldiers.

Nevertheless, RFA was not able to contact Thai unit 547 based along the border in O’Namron, Chanbury province which is located next to Cambodia’s Pailin province, to obtain additional information.

Cambodian border troops along the Phally-Phalla hills in Pailin province indicated that, today, black-clad Thai soldiers installed landmine signs in several locations on Cambodian territories, near border posts no. 68 and 69.

A border soldier said: “They came to border post no. 68 and they installed landmine signs on our territories. My unit was patrolling and we saw fresh new signs they just installed at border posts 68 and 69. Their landmine signs look just like ours.”

Regarding Thai soldiers installing landmine signs on Cambodian territories, Cambodian border patrol troops indicated that Cambodian army officers in Pailin province are reviewing this situation and they have called the Thai soldiers to pull them out.

It should be noted that the aggression on Cambodian territories in Pailin province by Thai black-clad soldiers based in Chanbury province took place right after new armed clash occurred between troops from the two countries in Preah Vihear province on 03 March 2009.

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Troops jittery after deadly Cambodia-Thai clash

4/04/2009
AFP

Tensions were high among troops on both sides of the disputed Cambodian-Thai border Saturday while Thai and Cambodia prime ministers played down gunbattles near a temple which left two soldiers dead.

Both sides were jittery after Friday's firefight, which was the biggest flare-up for months in a bitter feud over territory near the ancient Preah Vihear temple.
Thai troops fired into the air in the morning after a Cambodian soldier's rifle accidentally discharged several shots, Cambodian troops said, while a Cambodian commander could be heard telling his soldiers to hide behind trees.

"The situation at the border is quiet now and back to normal," Cambodian commander Yem Pem said, adding that troops were on "24-hour alert."

Soldiers exchanged rocket, machinegun and mortar fire Friday, damaging the staircase of the 11th-century Preah Vihear temple, following a brief skirmish earlier in the day, officials said.

One Thai soldier was killed and another died in hospital later, while 10 others were injured, said the Thai military. Cambodian officials reported no casualties.

A Thai military official said nine soldiers were still being treated in hospital, with two of them in critical condition.

Cambodia's foreign ministry said the violence damaged a government office and local market. Hundreds of Cambodians who lost their homes in the fighting were evacuated to a school 20 kilometres (12 miles) away.

"We were so frightened because the situation was so tense," said Chum Vanna, 27, who was evacuated with her husband and children.

"I'm very angry with the Thai soldiers. All of my belongings were completely burned. We came here with just a few clothes," she added.

The area saw several clashes last year after Cambodia received United Nations World Heritage status for the temple ruins in July. Four soldiers were killed in a firefight in October.

But Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Thai counterpart were keen to diffuse the latest crisis, both sides insisting usual border committee talks would proceed along with meetings scheduled at a key regional summit next week.

"It is normal that every side has the right to self-defence. If they come, it happens. And as we enter their territory they also have the right to fire at us," Hun Sen said during a visit to the southern province of Kampot.

"But we consider this (clash) an incident. I don't call it a war... We are very sorry. We don't want Cambodian or Thai soldiers to die," he added.

"I think (the talks) must go ahead," Thai Premier Abhisit Vejjajiva told reporters. "We don't want to see clashes and losses on either side."

Thai army chief General Anupong Paojinda said Cambodian and Thai officials were in talks to defuse the stand off.

"High level officials are talking to each other with good mutual understanding. There are no problems," he said.

Hun Sen and Abhisit are due to join a summit of Association of Southeast Asian Nations and key regional partners in Thailand from Friday.

Singapore, meanwhile, urged both sides to "exercise utmost restraint in the broader interests of the region."

Friday's clashes came three days after Hun Sen warned Thailand not to allow its troops to cross into disputed land. Bangkok denies claims that 100 soldiers went over the frontier a week ago.

Cambodia and Thailand have been at loggerheads for decades over the site perched on a forested cliff overlooking green swathes of countryside.

The World Court in 1962 awarded the ruins to Cambodia, but the most accessible entrance is in Thailand, and some of the disputed land is yet to be demarcated.

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Troops standby after clash at Cambodia-Thai border

Saturday, April 04, 2009

PREAH VIHEAR, Cambodia (AFP) — Troops were on alert at the disputed Cambodian-Thai border Saturday, after heavy gunbattles left at least two soldiers dead a day earlier, Cambodian officials said.

The mood was tense after the fighting Friday, which was the biggest flare-up for months in a bitter feud over territory near an ancient temple.

"The situation at the border is quiet now and back to normal, but as usual, our soldiers are on 24-hour alert," said Yem Pem, a Cambodian commander stationed in the disputed area.
Soldiers exchanged rocket, machinegun and mortar fire on Friday near the 11th-century Preah Vihear temple on the frontier, following a brief skirmish earlier in the day, officials from both sides said.

Hundreds of Cambodians who live near the ancient Khmer temple could be seen fleeing the area Saturday, after their homes and the local market were destroyed in the fighting.

The area was the scene of several clashes last year after Cambodia successfully applied for United Nations world heritage status for the ruins in July, with four soldiers killed in a battle there in October.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen sought to downplay the latest incident during a Saturday speech to handicapped veterans and villagers in the southern province of Kampot.

"It is normal that every side has the right to self-defence. If they come, it happens. And as we enter their territory they also have the right to fire at us," Hun Sen told the crowd.

"But we consider this (clash) an incident. I don't call it a war... We are very sorry. We don't want Cambodian or Thai soldiers to die," he added.

One Thai soldier was killed at the site of the clash on Friday and another died in hospital later, while 10 others were injured, said the Thai military. Cambodian officials reported they suffered no casualties.

A Thai military official said nine soldiers were still being treated in two hospitals in the northeastern Thai city of Ubon Ratchathani, with two of them in critical condition.

Thailand's defence minister, General Prawit Wongsuwon, would visit the injured soldiers later Saturday she added.

The clashes came three days after Hun Sen warned Thailand that it would face fighting if its troops crossed into disputed land. Thailand denies claims that about 100 of its troops went over the frontier a week ago.

Tensions first flared along the border in July last year over the granting of UN heritage to the temple, although the countries have been at loggerheads over the site for decades.

Subsequent talks between Cambodia and Thailand have not resolved the dispute and Thailand's foreign minister was forced to apologise Thursday, after being accused by Hun Sen of calling him a gangster.

Further talks are due address the latest clash on Monday and Tuesday in Phnom Penh.

Cambodia's Hun Sen and Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva are due to take part in a summit between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and key regional partners in Thailand from Friday.

Cambodian foreign ministry spokesman Koy Kuong said the latest clashes would not affect scheduled talks between the two sides.

"Plans for all of our programmes remain the same, including the ASEAN meeting and joint border talks between Cambodia and Thailand," Koy Kuong said.

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Cambodia PM says Thai border conflict "not a war"

By Ek Madra

PHNOM PENH, April 4 (Reuters) - Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said on Saturday a border clash with Thailand around a 900-year-old Hindu temple would not escalate into a more serious conflict.

"I regard the fighting yesterday as an incident, not a war," Hun Sen said a day after Thai and Cambodian troops exchanged rifle and rocket fire near the Preah Vihear temple that has been a source of tension for decades.
Cambodia suffered no casualties, while Thai authorities said two of their soldiers were killed and nine wounded in the worst fighting since a military stand-off near the temple last year.

"I don't want to see these incidents repeated or fighting expand to other areas," Hun Sen told a group of disabled soldiers during a visit to the coastal province of Kampot. Both sides accused each other of firing first in two separate clashes on Friday, which Thailand called a "misunderstanding".

Preah Vihear, or Khao Phra Viharn as it is known in Thailand, sits on an escarpment that forms the natural border between the two countries and has been a source of tension for generations.

The International Court of Justice awarded it to Cambodia in 1962, but the ruling did not determine the ownership of 1.8 square miles (4.6 sq km) of scrub next to the ruins, leaving considerable scope for disagreement.

A joint border committee set up to demarcate the jungle-clad border area after last year's clashes, which killed one Thai and three Cambodian soldiers, will meet again on Sunday for three days of talks.

Both sides have talked about developing the site into a tourist destination. The site is some 600 km (370 miles) east of Bangkok and only a decade ago was controlled by remnants of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge guerrilla army.

(Additional reporting by Vithoon Amorn in Bangkok)
(Writing by Darren Schuettler; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

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Thepthai: Thaksin sighted in Cambodia [... near Hun Sen's residence]

4/04/2009
Bangkokpost.com

Fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra has allegedly been sighted in Cambodia, says Abhisit Vejjajiva’s personal spokesman Thepthai Senpong. Thaksin was allegedly spotted near the residence of Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen.
Mr Thepthai said if this was true, the Cambodian government should clarify the matter with Thailand, similar to Lao PDR’s manner when it made clear Thaksin was banned from entering its territory. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was inspecting this issue.

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Thai-Cambodia Authorities Downplay Border Clash

APRIL 4, 2009
Associated Press

Cambodia's prime minister on Saturday downplayed the border clashes that killed at least three Thai soldiers near a disputed 11th century temple as a mere "incident" between neighbors that would not break out into war.

Military commanders from both sides said calm had been restored after Friday's fighting, which saw troops exchange fire with assault rifles and rocket launchers along Cambodia's northern border.
Thailand acknowledged that three of its soldiers had been killed and 12 were wounded. Cambodia said its military suffered no casualties. Cambodia earlier said as many as four were killed.

"Yesterday there was brief fighting, but the fighting was like neighbors who live close to each other and always have disputes," Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said. "Today they have a dispute, then they soothe things and talk to each other."

The border area has been a hot spot since Thailand took offense over Cambodia having the Preah Vihear temple declared a U.N. World Heritage site last year.

Although the World Court ruled in 1962 that the temple, also claimed by Thailand, is on Cambodian territory, many Thais still rankle over the decision. Thailand also maintains claims to nearby land where the fighting took place.

Hun Sen, who just a few days earlier had issued a fierce warning that Thailand would face tough fighting if its troops crossed into disputed territory near the temple, struck a conciliatory tone Saturday.

Smiling as he spoke, he described burst of combat as an "incident," not a war.

Hun Sen was speaking to several hundred people at a village he established for disabled army veterans and their families. The sometimes volatile leader was celebrating his 58th birthday.

He said Friday's fighting was triggered when Thai soldiers advanced into heavily mined territory claimed by Cambodia and ignored warnings to turn back. Thai officials denied any intrusion and said Cambodian troops fired first.

The Cambodian prime minsiter emphasized that the fighting left no Cambodian soldiers killed or wounded, with "not even a scratch."

Thailand's deputy regional commander, Maj. Gen. Tawatchai Samutsakorn, said three of his country's soldiers were killed and 12 wounded.

Cambodian armed forces commander Gen. Pol Saroeun said the situation along the border was now calm.

"There are no more confrontations, and both sides' front-line commanders will have negotiations," he said.

Leaders in both countries have a history of playing to nationalist sentiment in sovereignty disputes.

Cambodians are very sensitive to perceived slights by their larger, richer neighbor Thailand, which many Cambodians see as arrogant.

Domestic political power struggles in Thailand in the past few years have led to an upsurge of nationalist sentiment there that few politicians are willing to buck and some use for leverage against their rivals.

The tensions erupted in brief border clashes last year, killing two Cambodian soldiers and one Thai, and both sides have stepped up deployment of soldiers at the border since then.

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Cambodian PM calls for peace after border clashes

April 04, 2009
AP

Koh Sla: Cambodia's prime minister has urged for a peaceful resolution of a border crisis with neighbouring Thailand, a day after armed skirmishes between the two countries left at least three Thai soldiers dead.
Military commanders from both sides said calm had been restored after Friday's fighting, which saw troops exchange fire with assault rifles and rocket launchers along Cambodia's northern border near an 11th century temple.

Thailand acknowledged three of its soldiers had been killed and 12 wounded. Cambodia said it suffered no casualties.

The area has been a hotspot since Thailand took offence over Cambodia having the Preah Vihear temple declared a UN World Heritage site last year.

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The killing fields' torturer in chief: 30 years after the downfall of Pol Pot, the commander of a secret jail finally goes on trial

Kaing Guek Eav, the former chief of the S-21 prison, is seen during the court case in Phnom Penh this week

03rd April 2009
By Tony Rennell
Mail Online (UK)

Former maths teacher Kaing Guek Eav is accused of the murder and torture of 14,000 Cambodians

When Pol Pot, one of history's undoubted monsters, died in his sleep in a remote jungle corner of Cambodia 11 years ago, he left us a mystery about the depths of human depravity that will never be resolved.

With the violent deaths of two million of his own people on his conscience, how could he possibly ever have slept at night?

His Khmer Rouge communist guerillas took control of one of Asia's most beautiful lands and, in four years from 1975 to 1979, turned it into a charnel house. A quarter of the population died from starvation and overwork, or were executed as 'enemies of the revolution', many of them on their knees and staring into a mass grave as their brains were bashed out with a hoe.

An ancient kingdom would ever after be associated with piles of human skulls and the stench of death. A chilling new phrase entered the lexicon - 'the killing fields'.

The dictator responsible for all this was never brought to justice, nor in the 30 years since their overthrow were any others from the close clique of murderous fanatics who surrounded 'Comrade Number One', as he insisted on being called.

Until now. This week in Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh, the first of Pol Pot's henchmen went on trial before a United Nations court for crimes against humanity, murder and torture.

It will take three months to hear the evidence against 66-year-old Kaing Guek Eav. Dressed in a white shirt, this seemingly mild-mannered old man, a former maths teacher, bowed politely to the redrobed judges and acknowledged that he understood the 45 pages of charges against him.

It was a courtesy he never extended to the thousands of victims who arrived in the dead of night at the secret police interrogation centre he was in charge of three decades ago.

Blindfolded and bound, they were thrown off lorries to be abused, assaulted and, almost without exception, slaughtered. At least 14,000 prisoners passed through his hands. Only a dozen are thought to have lived to tell the tale.

Known then as 'Comrade Duch', he was the commandant of a top-secret facility called S-21, housed in a former high school in Phnom Penh. Its existence was unknown to the outside world - and indeed to all except the very top echelons in his own country - until Vietnamese forces liberated Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge in January 1979.

Driving along the empty streets of the deserted capital, two journalists came upon a compound surrounded by corrugated iron topped with barbed wire. An evil smell was coming from inside.

They pushed through the gates and in the first of four white-washed buildings found the bodies of 14 men. They were chained to metal beds and their throats had been cut so recently that the blood on the floor was still wet.

Other buildings were full of tiny, cramped cinder-block cells, some just six feet in length and three feet wide. In one room were piles of shackles, handcuffs and whips.

There were administrative offices too, crammed with filing cabinets in which the details of each inmate, a mug- shot photograph and his (or her) interrogation and confession were stored.

These showed that some prisoners were held for months, others for just days or even hours but their fate was always the same. Their files were marked 'discarded' or 'smashed' - euphemisms for murdered. Not for nothing did workers in a nearby factory call this, in hushed tones, 'the place where people went in but never came out'.

The secret of S-21 was in the paperwork. Out in the Cambodian countryside, millions of men, women and children were dying but no one was counting numbers or logging names. But this facility, overseen by the feared and merciless Duch, was different.

Its inmates were members of the Khmer Rouge denounced as traitors in the purges that - just as in Stalin's Soviet Union - were a constant feature of a totalitarian communist regime steeped in paranoia.

Their 'confessions', some just a few words, others running to hundreds of pages, were crucial evidence for their accusers. The politically-correct (in Khmer Rouge terms) Duch read and vetted every one before passing it on to his superiors.

Innocence was out of the question at S-21. The line taken by the 60 interrogators working for Duch was the ultimate in George Orwell's 'Big Brother' logic.

Terrified and bewildered new arrivals were told they must be guilty of something or they would not have been sent there because the party never made mistakes. It was now down to them to confess, and the more they denied they had done anything wrong, the guiltier they must be.

Torture loosened their imaginations and their tongues. Some who had never even heard of the CIA, America's Central Intelligence Agency, owned up to being in its pay. Others described sexual affairs with their own daughters.

A woman who cooked for Pol Pot admitted trying to poison him, another to preparing a bad meal for some Chinese diplomats in order to embarrass 'Comrade Number One'.

More than one prisoner begged to be killed 'because I have betrayed the revolution'.

Factory workers confessed to sabotaging machinery, agricultural workers to rustling livestock. Even some S-21 guards found the tables turned on them and, having been denounced, owned up to imaginary crimes. The revolution was eating its own children.

In style, the interrogations were a throwback beyond even the show trials of the Stalin and the black arts of the KGB to the Spanish Inquisition 500 years ago. American academic David Chandler, who took it on himself to sift through the acres of documents left behind at S-21, listed the tortures used there.

They included beating by hand, with a heavy stick, with branches and with bunches of electric wire; cigarette burns; electric shock; forcing inmates to eat their own excrement and drink their urine; hanging upside down; holding up arms for an entire day; fingernails pulled out; suffocation with plastic bag; immersion in water and water dripped onto the forehead.

Electric shocks were administered to prisoners so commonly, Chandler said, that a list of instructions was drawn up for prisoners included a request not to scream when the shocks were applied. The penalty for disobeying was ten strokes of a whip or five more electric shocks.

One of the very few S-21 survivors later described his interrogator tying an electric wire around his handcuffs and connecting the other end to his trousers with a safety pin.

'Then he asked me: "Who collaborated with you to betray the Khmer Rouge leadership?" I couldn't think of anything to say. He connected the wire to the electric power, plugged it in, and shocked me.

'I passed out. I don't know how many times he shocked me, but when I came to, I could hear a distant voice asking over and over who my connection was. I couldn't get any words out. I collapsed on the floor, my shirt completely drenched with sweat. To this day I don't understand why they arrested me.'

That this particular prisoner did not die was an unexplained anomaly. Most S-21 inmates were dead men and women from the moment they were dumped at its gates.

Their pleadings and 'confessions' made no difference. In the early days of the facility they were taken to a field next to the compound, battered to death and buried. But as this makeshift cemetery filled up and the number of prisoners rocketed, the prisoners were taken instead to a village named Choeung Ek in the country 15 miles away.

Trucks loaded with the condemned were driven there at night, sometimes as many as 300 in a single batch. The only eye-witness account of what happened next came from a former guard, who described how they were taken in batches to pits already dug in the ground, ordered to kneel at the edge and then hit on the neck with the iron axle from an ox cart.

One blow from the experienced executioners - there were eight listed on the S-21 staff list - was usually enough but their throats were then slit for good measure.

Duch, it seems, was not himself a killer, though he was seen at Choeung Ek watching the executions from underneath a tree. He may not have been a torturer either - he left that to others.

But he did preside over this production line of brutality and death for year after year, even collaborating in the killing of members of his own family. Two of his brothers-in-law were processed through S-21 and he did not lift a finger to save them.

He saved himself, however. The night before the Vietnamese arrived, the last throats were slit and he walked away from S-21, not to be seen for 20 years.

He was thought to be dead when he was discovered and arrested in 1999, working among Christian groups in refugee camps on the Thai-Cambodian border, in what appears to have been a belated attempt to assuage his guilt.

But, for all that his regime at S-21 was a living hell, the diabolical activities there were just the tip of a terrible iceberg.

In the rest of Cambodia, one hundred times as many people fell victim to the lethal excesses of the Khmer Rouge. And these were not party members who had fallen from grace and were purged, but ordinary people whose only crime was that they had been city-dwellers, middle class and educated.

The day in April 1975 when the Khmer Rouge took power, the population of the capital was force-marched into the countryside, never to return. The horrors they were subjected to defy belief. Starvation was routine, work on the land crippling, execution a constant threat.

Loung Ung was a little girl who survived to write down her memories 20 years later in a book she simply called First They Killed My Father.

She lost brothers, sisters and both parents. She saw children die of hunger and adults go crazy with grief. She watched as her father was led away by boys with rifles, never to be seen again.

For Haing Noor, a doctor, survival depended on concealing his origins. In Pol Pot's mad domain, professionals were exterminated as class enemies, even those with the medical skills to benefit others.

A visitor to the killing fields memorial contemplates the unimaginable horrors that took place under Pol Pot's rule

Three times he was arrested by the Khmer Rouge and tortured within an inch of his life in an attempt to get him to incriminate himself. The treatment he received was sub-human. With a dozen others, he was lashed by ropes to an upright cross and a fire was lit beneath his feet. 'Are you a doctor?' they demanded but he stuck to his story that he had been a taxi driver in Phnom Penh before the revolution. Then they pulled him down and put a plastic bag over his head.

Next to him a crucified woman was slit open, disembowelled and mutilated. 'It was nothing for them to cut someone open,' he wrote later. 'Just a whim.'

On another occasion, his head was clamped in a vice and water dripped on to his skull for a whole day until he nearly went mad.

He survived all these ordeals and more, only to see his father taken away one evening, hands tied, roped to others in a procession of the doomed. Noor was helpless, unable to intervene.

'As he came close he lifted his head and looked at me with immense sadness. From where he was going there was no coming back.' His father would end up in the sort of mass execution site that Noor once stumbled on in the forest, 'a hillock piled high with corpses, the victims killed by blows to the head. Vultures plucked at them. The smell was awful.'

Noor would go on to be a Hollywood star in the United States, winning an Oscar for his part as Cambodian interpreter Dith Pran in the 1984 film, The Killing Fields. He never understood what possessed the Khmer Rouge to make them so cruel.

'It was just something they did,' he concluded, 'a craving they could not satisfy. They created enemies to devour, which increased their appetite for enemies.' It was the ultimate in vicious circles.

Whether the trial now under way in Cambodia will go anyway to squaring that circle, to find explanation or redemption, remains to be seen.

The case against Duch is strengthened by the documentary evidence that he and his staff at S-21 were so assiduous in keeping. His handwriting is on many of the records. A born-again Christian, he is said to have confessed his part in the atrocities and asked the families of his victims for forgiveness.

A survivor, aged 78, plans to confront him in court. 'I want to ask him why he killed his own people and why his men tortured me,' said Chum Manh. 'What motivated them to commit such heinous crimes?'

At the end of the trial, the deaths at S-21 may well be accounted for. But this is just the beginning. What about the many hundreds of thousands of others that took place during Cambodia's holocaust?

Four more of Pol Pot's henchmen have been indicted and are due to face their accusers once Duch has been dealt with, all of them more senior than him and, observers think, more culpable. It is claimed he plans to give evidence against them.

But for 'Comrade Number One', Pol Pot himself, on whose behalf such barbarism was carried out, there will be no judgment in this world.

The verdict of history will have to suffice for him - and that will be that he was a 20th-century monster on a par with Hitler and Stalin, a murderer on a grand scale and a genocidal maniac who made a heavenly land into a hell on earth.

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