Sam Rainsy declares border victory

Tuesday, 02 February 2010 15:03 Meas Sokchea

By: phnompenhpost.com

Photo by: Heng Chivoan

SRP members and journalists listen to Sam Rainsy speak via video link at the party’s Phnom Penh headquarters on Monday.

 

OPPOSITION leader Sam Rainsy has claimed victory in reversing what he says are a series of Vietnamese border incursions in Svay Rieng province, six days after he was sentenced to two years jail for uprooting border demarcation posts.

Speaking by video link from Paris to supporters at the Sam Rainsy Party headquarters on Monday, Sam Rainsy said his symbolic act had drawn attention to the eastern border and forced Vietnam into withdrawing three other border posts in the vicinity. “We are very lucky we have had a victory in forcing Vietnam to withdraw from Cambodia,” he said.

“This is the first time in history that the yuon have withdrawn from Cambodia,” he added, using the racist epithet for the Vietnamese.

Sam Rainsy said also that he will soon embark upon a tour of those countries that were signatories to the 1991 Paris Peace Accords to file complaints about the incursions. The tour is set to begin with a visit to the United Kingdom next week.

The SRP says its claims are substantiated by a series of maps it released last month showing border markers 184, 185, 186 and 187 sitting hundreds of metres inside Cambodia’s legal territory as defined on French- and American-drawn maps.

“The east is more dangerous than the west, because we have all joined forces against Thailand.… But the government has done nothing about the yuon,” Sam Rainsy said.

Phay Siphan, spokesman for the Council of Ministers, dismissed Sam Rainsy’s comments, saying the evidence was based on inaccurate Google Earth maps.

“Sam Rainsy’s evidence is not true. If Sam Rainsy says it is true evidence, we want him to bring it to show us,” he said.