Sam RainsyCambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy accused Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday of playing a dangerous game by drawing their country into a conflict with Thailand.
Sam Rainsy's parliamentary immunity was revoked this week after he was accused of uprooting boundary markers along the country's eastern border with Vietnam.
Hun Sen only paid a lot of attention to the possibility of Cambodia losing territory to Thailand but he neglected to say this danger had already materialised on a large scale on the eastern border with Vietnam, said Rainsy who leads the Sam Rainsy Party.
Thailand had only recently started to unfairly challenge the status of a piece of Cambodian territory surrounding Preah Vihear temple, while Vietnam had grabbed thousands of square kilometres of land in many provinces over the last 30 years, he said.
The opposition leader, who is in Europe now, said in an open letter to the Cambodian people that Hun Sen was using a classic tactic to divert attention from Vietnam by exacerbating tensions and drawing unpre-cedented attention its western neighbour, Thailand.
Cambodia and Thailand have been at loggerheads over Preah Vihear for more than a year. The conflict was fuelled by Hun Sen appointing former Thai PM Thaksin Shinawatra as his adviser, which prompted retaliatory moves over the past two weeks. Both countries have downgraded diplomatic relations with each other.
Rainsy said Hun Sen opted to do this to secure his power and to save Vietnamese interests in Cambodia. Vietnam ousted the Khmer Rouge from the power in 1979 and installed a regime that Hun Sen was part of, which held power till 1989.
"From a historical and geopolitical perspective Thailand is Vietnam's main rival in mainland Indochina. Therefore, weakening Thailand is in the long term interest of her rival," Rainsy said.
"To weaken Thailand, nothing is more effective than fanning the flames of internal divisions among the Thai people and supporting one fighting group against the other," he said in the letter.
The opposition leader urged Hun Sen's government to remain neutral over internal disputes in other countries.
Any spill over from the current tension or unrest in Thailand could be very detrimental to Cambodia, he said.
Hun Sen's miscalculation was like throwing oil on fire in a neighbouring country and was likely at the least to burn his fingers, and at worse, could set Cambodia ablaze, as past experiences showed when "we unnecessarily and unwisely took sides in our neighbours' internal disputes", he said.
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