Violation of Cambodia’s territorial integrity unceasingly perpetrated by Vietnam
Date : July 20, 2015
Honorable Ban Ki-Moon
United Nations Secretariat
760 United Nations Plaza
New York City, New York 10017, United States
Subject: Violation of Cambodia’s territorial integrity unceasingly perpetrated by Vietnam
Dear Mr. Ban Ki-moon, United Nations Secretariat
On behalf of the Cambodian people, we would urgently come to you as Cambodian citizenry to inform you of the continual and intolerable acts perpetrated upon Cambodia by Vietnam.
As of 2015, Vietnam has been unceasingly and repeatedly violated Cambodia’s national territorial integrity and sovereignty. Even after helping the Khmer Rouges to grasp power in the expansionist context of Communism throughout Southeast Asia, this Communist country has never given up its hegemonic ambitions over Cambodia and Laos. Taking advantage of its occupation of Cambodia during 1979-1989, Vietnam had coercively forced its regime in Phnom Penh to validate additionally to many other agreements aiming at gaining controlling all over Cambodia’s economic and natural resource sectors including unfair border treaties wholly to its advantage. The treaties signed in 1982 and in 1985, and the additional agreement of the border treaties signed 2005 are the obvious examples and in breach of the Agreement on a Comprehensive Political Settlement of the Cambodia Conflict October 23, 1991.
As stated in his letter in December 1992, Norodom Sihanouk, previously King and President of Cambodia Supreme National Council, was strongly concerned about the loss of Cambodia’s national territorial integrity and sovereignty, and its economic independence (enclosed). Vietnam, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, was one of the signatories of the Agreement on a Comprehensive Political Settlement of the Cambodia Conflict October 23, 1991 also known as Paris Peace Agreements, which explicitly emphasized the compliance of Sovereignty, Independence, Territorial Integrity and Inviolability, Neutrality and National Unity of Cambodia. Yasushi Akashi, the head of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), was in charge of ensuring the compliance of this Agreement.
Even after these border treaties which were unfairly signed in the context of subordination, the border lines have been systematically moved into the Cambodian territory. Many Cambodian villages have been annexed. Highly toxic and harmful chemical products to people's health have been spread in the fields and vegetable plantations of the Cambodian villagers. The spraying of chemical toxin defoliants by the government of Vietnam against Cambodian farmlands and food crops in order to force the removal of the land owners from the disputed border territories is a violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), and was the subject of a Complaint filed with the United Nations Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) agency on June 25. Both Vietnam and Cambodia are signatories to the CWC treaty.
As in the past, Vietnam uses armed forces to beat up the Cambodian people who only peacefully defend their ancestral land. Recently, some observers from the civil society as well as some of Members of Parliament (MP) like Riel Khemarin, MP in Svay Rieng and UM Sam An, deputy in Siem Reap, were seriously injured. Even the monks were targeted by the Vietnamese force.
In this context of unbalanced relationship and systematic violation of the territorial integrity of Cambodia by Vietnam, we, the Cambodian people demand United Nations insistence that the Peace Agreements of Paris, signed in October 23, 1991, be respected and fully applied. We would also ask that the UN’s OPCW agency send an investigation team to the disputed border territory to look into this violation of the CWC prohibition against the use of chemical toxins to attack the territory of another member state.
Respectfully
By __________________
(Name of representative to sign)
Enclosed: Norodom Sihanouk Letter, December 14, 1992.
Name of organizations: (list)