Thailand to present evidence of Cambodian landmine planting to Ottawa Convention

The Thai Foreign Ministry will submit video clips and still images, showing Cambodian soldiers in the act of laying anti-personnel landmines on Thai soil at Phu Makua in Sa Sa Ket province, to the Ottawa Convention support committee this Friday, said Rear Admiral Surasant Kongsiri, spokesman of the Defence Ministry.

He told a news conference today, at the Thai-Cambodian Border Situation Command Centre, that the clips and still images from a cellphone found at Phu Makua by a Thai naval unit are important evidence to support Thailand’s claim that Cambodia has violated the Ottawa Convention.

Maratee Nalita Andamo, deputy spokesperson of the Thai Foreign Ministry, said that Cambodia has attempted to distort the facts by claiming that the clips were staged by using Thai actors, dressed up in Cambodian army uniforms.

Rear Admiral Surasant also said that Ban Nong Chan, in Sa Kaeo province, which is claimed by Cambodia, is “100 percent Thai territory” and was used to shelter hundreds of thousands Cambodian refugees fleeing the war in Cambodia in 1975, at the request of the UNHCR.

After the end of the war in Cambodia, he said most of the refugees returned to Cambodia, leaving some who refused to return. They then established a Cambodian community, in violation of the memorandum of understanding signed between Thailand and Cambodia in 2000, he claimed.

He then accused Cambodia of using a “human wall” to provoke Thailand and to escalate the border situation, adding that Thailand has tried to resolve this problem via bilateral mechanisms for more than ten years, but Cambodia has not shown any intention to do so.

He also defended the erection of barbed wire fencing at Ban Nong Chan and Chong An Ma, to protect Thai territorial sovereignty and the Thai people and to prevent Cambodian troops from sneaking in to lay landmines.