Only 14 years ago, this magnificent temple was a place of death. Tensions are high again

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Cambodia: It is so tranquil in the grounds of the Preah Vihear Temple it is difficult to imagine it any other way.

Only a few tourists are around this afternoon, which I’m told is typical. If anyone’s making chit-chat, it’s swallowed by the vastness or muted by the trees. The birds are all you can hear. At this height on the Dangrek mountain range, the air is impossibly still.

The Preah Vihear temple complex in northern Cambodia.Credit: National Authority for Preah Vihear

We amble the 800-metre-long stone causeway that links a series of World Heritage-listed sanctuaries, each seemingly grander than the last, until the scene gives way to a sheer cliff face and breathtaking views of lush plains and jutting mountains.

Built between the ninth and 12th centuries by powerful Angkorian kings, this temple is even older than the famous Angkor Wat, and it is magnificent.

So it is jarring on a day like this when Phal Chanthou, one of many police guardians of the site, points to the spot where his brother-in-law was blown up only 14 years ago by a 155-millimetre rocket. It is a crumbling edifice of moss-covered stone, supported with wooden scaffolding and awaiting UNESCO approval, he says, for restoration by one of the three major site donors – China, India and the United States.

The Preah Vihear temple complex was built by Angkorian kings between the ninth and 12th centuries.

Seung Makara, who was 36 years old on February 4, 2011, had scrambled up the face of the ruins when fire rained down from nearby Thai positions. He got no further, Chanthou tells us. Two others who sheltered by the bottom were injured. These particular ruins, like in other parts of the 150-hectare site, were damaged in the fighting, he says.

Makara, a Cambodian photographer, was at the temple to document the border crises with Thailand that flared for about three years from 2008, claiming more than 30 Thai and Cambodian lives.

Though Cambodia had won an International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling in 1962 declaring the temple complex to be in its sovereign territory, areas immediately surrounding it remained ambiguous, allowing Thailand to move into some of them.

Another ruling by the ICJ in 2013 about the surrounding areas also went in Cambodia’s favour, bringing the Preah Vihear Temple dispute to a formal close. Still, close to 200 kilometres of the Thai-Cambodia border remain contested.

Phal Chanthou (left) where his brother-in-law was killed in 2011.

Skip forward along this continuum of border bad blood, and it brings us to the extraordinary events of the past five weeks, which reached a high point on Tuesday when Thailand’s Constitutional Court suspended Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra.

In short, a border skirmish – the first for some time – broke out on the morning of May 28 in an area known as the Emerald Triangle, near the adjoining territories of Cambodia, Thailand and Laos. Thai troops killed a Cambodian soldier. Governments then traded border closures and ardent declarations of sovereignty.

Seeking to talk it through, Paetongtarn phoned Cambodian strongman Hun Sen, who recorded the conversation and, by his own admission, sent it to about 80 people.

When patriotic Thais heard the contents of that call, which were inevitably leaked to the media, they were outraged: their prime minister had both criticised a top Thai army man and taken a fawning, deferential tone towards Hun Sen, who is distrusted by Thais – and almost everyone else.

Thailand’s Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra was suspended on Tuesday pending a Constitutional Court hearing. Credit: AP

It was too much, and so a group of senators referred the prime minister to the court, which will now consider if she is constitutionally fit to resume her duties amid the backdrop of political protests, intrigue and manoeuvring.

The Preah Vihear Temple, a seven-hour drive north of Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh, is about 100 kilometres from the scene of the recent fighting in the Emerald Triangle. While there is no suggestion Thailand has any appetite for trouble at the sacred site, rising tensions have the Cambodians on alert.

Cambodian corporal Dy Song Heth keeps watch on Thailand from the Preah Vihear temple.

Border police and military men, all of them welcoming to us, vastly outnumber visitors here. One of them is Corporal Dy Song Heng, who is stationed on a jungle boardwalk at the base of the temple complex just a few hundred metres from Thailand. He uses binoculars, but Thai roads, buildings and a distant flag are easily visible without them.

“We chased them out in 2008, and they moved to that rock,” he tells us, pointing to a few cars dotting what he claims is a no man’s land between the borders. “We don’t do anything, even though they are not supposed to be there, because we don’t want trouble. But they have to stay there.

“If they try to expand, we will stop them.”

As we walk out of the complex, we jump as someone pokes a rocket launcher uncomfortably close to our legs from the base of a roadside bunker. It is getting late, and the Cambodian soldiers are taking their night positions.

Near this bunker, soldiers are moving about atop a section of ruins with food and a hog’s head on a plate. They are offerings to the temple spirit, we are told, so that Preah Vihear may remain tranquil.

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