Cambodia’s government says that it has officially requested the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to resolve its border disputes with Thailand, amid a steady ratcheting up of tension between the two neighbors.
In a post on Facebook, Prime Minister Hun Manet said that Cambodia had chosen “a peaceful resolution based on international law through the ICJ mechanism for solving the border dispute.” The post showed a picture of Deputy Prime Minister Prak Sokhonn holding a letter addressed to Philippe Gautier, the registrar of the ICJ, which Manet said would be delivered from the Cambodian embassy in the Netherlands to the ICJ in The Hague.
“Cambodia only needs justice, fairness and clarity to set the border line with neighboring countries so that our descendants will not continue to have endless problems together,” he wrote.
According to previous reports, Cambodia will ask the ICJ to rule on four disputed areas along the 800-kilometer shared border: the Ta Moan Thom, Ta Moan Toch, and Ta Krabei temples, Angkorian ruins that have been the subject of recent tensions, as well as an area close to the tri-border junction with Laos, where the two sides engaged in a brief exchange of gunfire on May 28. The clash resulted in the death of one Cambodian soldier, and led both sides to reinforce their military presence along the eastern edge of the shared border.
Thailand has already announced its opposition to the ICJ plan, saying that it does not recognize the jurisdiction of the court and that all issues should be solved bilaterally.
Cambodia and Thailand have a long history of disputes along their shared land border, which was set by border treaties between Siam and French Indo-China in 1904 and 1907 but has never been fully demarcated. The Cambodian request to the ICJ also coincided with the 63rd anniversary of the ICJ ruling that awarded Preah Vihear temple to Cambodia – an issue that formed the center of Cambodian government messaging over the weekend. The ICJ affirmed the ruling in 2013, after a protracted period of tension that erupted into armed clashes along the border, especially between 2008 and 2011.
The Cambodian announcement came as the bilateral Joint Border Commission (JBC) met in Phnom Penh, with the aim of defusing the recent border tensions. The June 14-15 meeting ended inconclusively. Both sides pledged to de-escalate tensions and continue dialogue. Thailand’s Foreign Ministry said that talks were cordial, and that both sides “will continue discussions and joint implementation” of border demarcation talks.
However, the two sides remain far apart on the substantive issues, in particular the question of whether the ICJ should be involved. Cambodia said in a statement that it had proposed to Thailand during the JBC meeting that the two countries should jointly bring the four disputed areas to the court and that these should no longer be included in future bilateral talks on border demarcation, but Bangkok remains opposed. (Cambodian government spokespeople added that these disputed areas were not discussed during the JBC meeting.) Disagreements have also since emerged over the maps being used as a reference for the talks.
The JBC talks came after a series of retaliatory moves by the two sides. Last week, Thailand restricted opening hours at several important border crossings, citing threats to national security, and threatened to cut internet and electricity supplies to Cambodian border provinces. In response, and following orders from former Prime Minister Hun Sen, Cambodia’s Ministry of Information issued an order banning the broadcast of Thai films in the country, while local telecommunications firms said that they had stopped using internet sources from Thailand. Cambodia also closed an important border crossing with Thailand that is used for agricultural shipments from Vietnam.
Hun Sen has also threatened a boycott of Thai goods, and urged the government to be fully prepared to receive a flood of Cambodian migrant workers from Thailand if relations worsen further. “I believe this border conflict will continue, and extremist groups and elements of the foreign military will mistreat Cambodian workers, especially once we proceed with legal action at the International Court of Justice (ICJ),” he wrote in a Facebook post on June 13. Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra has since announced that her government has no intention of expelling Cambodians from the country.
This morning, Hun Sen raised the stakes when he announced that Cambodia would close all border crossings and ban the import of Thai goods if Thailand did not reverse its own border restrictions within 24 hours.
All of this indicates that an immediate abatement of tensions is unlikely. Now that nationalist sentiment has been mobilized on both sides of the border, it is much harder for either government to make any sort of compromise without paying a hefty – and for Thailand’s government, potentially existential – political cost.