asianews

On November 7, opposition leader Sam Rainsy wrote to His Majesty the King Father Norodom Sihanouk, who is currently in Beijing, to inform him about the situation along the border with Vietnam, especially in Svay Rieng province where Cambodian farmers are continuously losing their rice fields because of border encroachments by the Vietnamese authorities.

Nobody understands the current border delineation process, which totally lacks transparency. Wooden poles have been arbitrarily and forcibly planted on Cambodian farmers’ rice fields by the Vietnamese authorities to allegedly delineate a “white zone”, which in turn would determine a new border line that would run deep inside Cambodia’s territory.

With the moral support of their elected representatives, Cambodian villagers have pulled out some of those wooden poles to symbolically show their refusal to give up ancestral rice fields they have been cultivating since 1979 and to be deprived of their livelihoods.

His Majesty the King Father, who presided over the now-defunct Supreme National Council on Border Affairs, which Sam Rainsy was a member of, reacted to the opposition leader’s report by writing today (November 10) three letters to CPP and Senate President Chea Sim, National Assembly President Heng Samrin and Prime Minister Hun Sen, asking them to “examine” the information and evidence provided by Sam Rainsy.