A fierce war of words keeps the two countries on edge

Weapons on the forested Thai-Kambol border have been quiet for three weeks.

However, since they are trying to gain international sympathy and support public support at home, a violent vocabulary is still being carried out by both countries. And a common view in Thailand, they lost.

“Perception is that Cambodia seems more agile, more ambitious and more media enthusiasts.” He said. “Thailand is always one step behind.”

The century border dispute climbed significantly to Thailand with a Cambodian Rocket Dam on the morning of July 24th, and then Thailand Air Strike.

Since then, the army of a Cambodian social media fighters supported by state -controlled English language media channels has opened a flood of allegations and inflammatory reports that have emerged many of them wrong.

A Thailand F16 fighter aircraft was shot, they reported that a plane on the fire falling from the sky – it turned out to be from Ukraine. Another unfounded claim that Thailand has lowering the poison gas was accompanied by the image of a water bombardment aircraft that lowered the pink fever retarder. This was really a forest fire in California.

Thailand responded with his own official statements, but they were often only dry statistical presentations, and they always came from a large number of sources – military, local government, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Bangkok could not claim that Cambodia, which pointed to the first use of artillery and killed several Thai civilians, was responsible for the rise.

The controversial billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra is not a secret that the Thai government, which is selected as focused on the Pheu Thai Party, has an uneasy relationship with the Thai army.

This was worsened in June in June, when he decided to leak a special phone call with Prime Minister Paetongarn Shinawatra, the daughter of a former Cambodian leader and a former friend of Thaksin. He objected to him to solve his differences on the border and complained that the forces of the General Command of the Thai Army opposed him.

The leak caused a political turmoil in Thailand, asked the Constitutional Court to suspend it, and as the border crisis increased, it weakened the government badly.

Hun Sen has no such difficulty. Technically, his son Hun Manet gave power, but it is clear that he still holds the reins after he managed the country for about 40 years.

The army, the ruling party and the media are under strict control. The motives of burning his friendship with Shinawatras are uncertain, but seems to be preparing for a greater conflict at the border.

Since the beginning, Hun Sen has constantly published in Khmer and English on his Facebook page, mocking the Thai government, with photographs of the army uniform or military maps.

On the other hand, the most visible figure on the Thai side was Mercurial 2nd Army Commander Lieutenant Gen Boonsin Padklang. Paetongtonarn’s complained of the same civil servant, and war nationalism won many fans in Thailand, but weakened the government’s authority.

Sebastian Strangio, the author of Hun Sen’s Cambodia, says, “Hun Sen is very smart”, a definite explanation that the leadership shaped the country.

“He used this asymmetric tactic of expanding the already existing sections in Thailand, and Cambodia’s very good in playing the victim, gave another powerful weapon against Thailand in the international arena.”

The Thai authorities admit that they are struggling to resist the tactics used by the Cambodian side.

“This is completely different from how information wars have been carried out before,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Ruses Jalichandra told the BBC. He said.

“What we say must be reliable and proved. This is the only weapon we can use to fight in this war. And sometimes we should stay depending on it even if it seems not fast enough.”

Thailand insisted that the border dispute with Cambodia should be resolved bilaterally without external intervention using a common border commission of the two countries established 25 years ago.

However, the Cambodia wants to internationalize the dispute. It was the first thing that directed the increasing conflict to the UN Security Council last month. He also asked the International Court of Justice to decide where the border should sleep. This presented a dilemma to Thailand.

The official reason why Thailand rejects ICJ participation is that it does not recognize ICJ judicial authority like many other countries. However, it is a collective memory for the loss and humiliation in ICJ, which cuts the heart of the border dispute.

Both Thailand and Cambodia covered the national stories of unjust regional losses.

In the case of Cambodia, it is the story of a strong empire in the mercy of poverty through war and revolution and the compassion of the regional ambitions of the larger neighbors.

Thailand’s is a new story of being forced to sacrifice regions to sacrifice the French or British colonial administration at the beginning of the 20th century. When Thailand accepted a new border with the French occupied Cambodia, French maps allowed the map to draw the map.

However, when Cambodia became an independent state in 1953, the Thai forces invaded a magnificent Khmer temple called Preah Vihear, or Khao Phra Vihan in Tay had peeled a cliff hill that had to mark the border.

Thais argued that the French chapters decided to remove the border from the basin, moved away from the agreed partition line and put the temple in Cambodia.

He took the Cambodian dispute to ICJ and won.

Regardless of the flaws of the map, the court decided that Thailand could not challenge them in the previous half century.

At that time, the Thai military ruler was shocked by the result and wanted to attack Cambodia, but was convinced by his diplomats to ruthlessly accept the decision.

Thailand’s sensitivity to the loss of 1962 makes it politically impossible for him to accept the role of ICJ in the resolution of the remaining border disputes.

This allowed Hun Sen to describe Thailand as a challenge to international law.

Thailand is now confronted with someone more influential to the Cambodian narrative: the use of land mines.

Both countries are the signature companies that prohibit the use of anti-Personnel mines to the Ottawa Congress, and Cambodia has the heritage of being one of the most overseas financing in the world.

Therefore, Thailand’s Cambodian troops put new anti-Personnel mines along the border and the accusation of more than one injury in Thai troops is a strange thing for the government in Phnom Penh.

Initially, Cambodia rejected the claim, saying that there were old mines from the civil war in the 1980s. The Thai government later received a group of diplomats and journalists to the border to show us what they found.

It was a collection of ammunition, which was placed on a table in the forest in the forest, just a few hundred meters from the border, and said that the Thai deming teams had survived the areas that were previously occupied by Cambodian troops.

We were limited to a small cleaning marked with red and white band. Beyond that, they said he was insecure anywhere. In a muddy track, we saw the Thai soldiers in the sample shelters hidden in trees hidden in trees.

Among the ammunition, there were dozens of thick, green plastic disk about the diameter of a plate. These were the Russian -2 -2 mines, which contained large amounts of explosives that would cause severe limb damage and difficult to disable. Some of them looked brand new and not thrown.

The first images of them pushed Cambodia to reject Thailand claims unfounded because the armament pins were not removed.

However, the armed and buried, but clearly recently – other mines were shown in the 1980s, not in the 1980s.

Thailand wants to take action against Cambodia by other signed by the Ottawa congress and asks the countries that support the demolition programs in Cambodia to finance them.

He argues that Cambodia refuses to accept or accept the plan to accept or remove them.

Cambodia fired Thailand by accusing the use of cluster ammunition and white phosphorus shells that were not banned but threatened for fighters; The Thai army agreed to use them, but only against military targets.

Cambodia also published pictures of what he said that he said he had damaged the Preah Vihear Temple, a world heritage area with a Tay bombardment, which was rejected by the Thai army.

The continuous volleyball of charges from both countries is likely to progress in border disputes.

Hun Sen and his son, as the defenders of the Cambodian territory, have gained politically benefiting from depicting themselves, but the conflict made the political challenges faced by the Thai government.

It created an intense hostility between Thailand and Cambodian nationalists. Hundreds of thousands of Cambodian immigrant workers left Thailand, which will hit a already fighting Cambodian economy.

“Both sides describe the border as a sacred line line between their countries,” Strangeo says. “Symbolism is very important. This cuts very deep questions of national identity, which is something that both sides cannot afford to step back at the moment.”