Listen to the audio version of this article (generated by AI).
Activists petitioned the French Embassy in Phnom Penh again this week, this time over Cambodia’s border conflict with Thailand, ahead of Sunday’s 20th Francophonie summit in the capital, which French President Emmanuel Macron will attend.
A group of 10 youth activists and Uon Kong, a Buddhist monk known for his social commentary and environmental activism, went to the embassy Friday to deliver a petition addressed to Macron, asking him to help resolve the border dispute with Thailand.
“The actions of the Thai military are causing serious concern for regional security, peace and the safety of Cambodian citizens along the border,” the petition said.
An embassy official who received the petition Friday morning told reporters, “It will be noted and we will translate it.”
The petition follows two others delivered this month to the French and Canadian embassies, one from a coalition of unions and rights groups and one from Rong Chhun, a senior adviser to the opposition Nation Power Party. The coalition urged the governments to press Cambodia to free jailed activists and reopen democratic space, while Rong Chhun sought help restoring his political rights. Tom Andrews, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Cambodia, also called on the government Monday to release activists before the summit.
Clashes in July and December last year killed more than 100 people and displaced hundreds of thousands on both sides before a ceasefire. Each side blames the other for the fighting, which has fueled nationalism in both countries and stems partly from border demarcations drawn during French colonial rule. Cambodia says more than 20,000 of its citizens whose border villages are now behind Thai barricades remain displaced.
France has urged both sides to settle the dispute peacefully and has offered Cambodia and Thailand access to its colonial-era border archives.
Eung Sereyvuth, one of the youth activists, said the group turned to France because Cambodia is hosting the summit, a gathering of leaders from the International Organisation of La Francophonie, a bloc of French-speaking countries and governments. He said he expects participating leaders to raise “the issue of Cambodia being violated by Thailand.”
Uon Kong said he hopes France and the other signatories of the 1991 Paris Peace Agreements, which ended Cambodia’s civil war, will feel “a sense of responsibility” to “protect and intervene” against “any states that invade Cambodia.”
Thai Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow warned Cambodia on Friday that using the summit to “present a one-sided account of the Thai-Cambodian border dispute” could undermine efforts to rebuild trust between the two countries.
Cambodian government spokesperson Pen Bona said Francophonie members “have the right to talk about what are important and relevant issues.”
A few kilometers from the embassy, Prime Minister Hun Manet on Friday delivered his first public remarks on the summit at the opening of its cultural fair.
“For La Francophonie, it is not just language. It is also about living cultures. It is a space for exchange, trade and innovation, and it is a set of values: peace, human dignity and solidarity,” he said. “Our country understands, perhaps better than most, the invaluable importance of peace.”
Cambodian activists have long used visits by foreign leaders to seek outside pressure on the government, including for the release of jailed critics, with mixed results.
In 2012, an appeals court freed 13 Boeung Kak Lake land activists weeks after then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged their release and shortly before she visited Phnom Penh for an ASEAN meeting. A decade later, then-U.S. President Joe Biden pressed then-Prime Minister Hun Sen at an ASEAN summit to free Cambodian-American lawyer Seng Theary. She remains in prison.
