Preah Vihear Temple - the Facts
The Dispute Between Thailand and Cambodia Goes Back to the 19th C.
Some background to the dispute at the Preah Vihear Temple situated on top of a mountain in the Preah Vihear province of Cambodia on the border with Sisaket Province in N.E. Thailand (formerly Siam) may be welcome, now that the story is a daily feature in the world’s press.
The temple has been a source of tension for decades, but it got worse after 1962 when the International Court of Justice ruled that the 900-year-old Preah Vihear temple belonged to Cambodia.
Cultural links date back to at least the 9th century when Mon and Khmer people migrated from China to the central plains and northern highlands of Thailand. At the time, the dominant empire was Cambodia’s ancient Khmer Empire and it ruled over Thailand from its Angkor Wat complex.
By the 13th century, Thai generals had had enough and in 1431 Angkor was attacked by Thai forces after which the Khmers abandoned it. This led to the Khmer paying tribute to Thai and Vietnamese kings as a vassal state for the next 3 centuries, except for a few periods when they achieved temporary independence.
In the 19th century the rush by the European powers into Asia and Africa was in full swing and by 1863 France was pushing into south Vietnam. Seeing the future in realistic terms, the Cambodian King Norodom ceded suzerainty and accepted France’s protection. For this concession, they returned to him two provinces that had been incorporated into Thailand, Battambang and Siem Reap.
In 1904, the French colonial authorities ruling Cambodia and the rulers of Thailand (then Siam), drew up a map to demarcate their border. They followed the watershed line of the Dângrêk mountain range and in 1907 presented the map to the Siamese authorities which showed Preah Vihear to be on the Cambodian side.
Thailand did not dispute this map at the time, reasoning, as it said in the 1954 court case, that as the temple was only accessible from the Thai side, it was obvious that it was a Thai possession.
In 1962 the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that the temple belonged to Cambodia, a decision not accepted by most Thais and one that still rankles today.
In 2003, a Cambodian mob set fire to the Thai embassy in Phnom Penh after a report in a Khmer newspaper that said a Thai TV star had claimed that Angkor belonged to Thailand. The report was false but the star is not welcome in Cambodia.
The grievance still simmers.
