00:00We can now bring in Petra Alderman, manager of the Saucy Hawk Southeast Asia Centre at the London School of Economics.
00:08Thank you so much for joining us on the programme today.
00:10Why has the situation escalated so quickly?
00:15Thank you very much for having me.
00:16Yes, I mean, the report has already mentioned that the current flare updates back to the 28th of May when the situation escalated or flared up again after, you know, many, many years of being dormant.
00:30And that was because the Thai soldier, sorry, the Cambodian soldier was killed in an exchange of fire.
00:35And these skirmishes happen regularly, but the most recent one has lasted since May.
00:40And there's been a tit for tat approach by both sides.
00:44What hasn't really helped has been a deterioration between relations, not just between the two countries on the level of the nations, but also between the leaders and their families.
00:55So I think that has complicated the situation further.
00:58I want to talk about that in just a second.
01:00But if you could talk about the root cause of this current problem.
01:04Yes, I mean, this goes way back in the history.
01:07Actually, it goes back to pre-colonial Southeast Asia.
01:10So before the Western colonial powers extended their interest to Southeast Asia, there was nothing like a, you know, a concept of the boarded nation states.
01:19Southeast Asia was organized around larger cities and some smaller villages and towns that were in a very kind of loose tributary system.
01:28Now, that changed, obviously, with the onset of the Western or European specifically colonization into the area.
01:37And the two dominant powers in the mainland Southeast Asia, at least, were the British and the French.
01:44And actually, it was those two powers that introduced the modern concept of geography, mapping and charting the territory into Southeast Asia.
01:51And it was these two countries that actually also drew the first kind of maps that showed how the territories of what is today Thailand and Cambodia actually looks like.
02:02Now, it's important to say that Thailand was never formally colonized by any of these countries, but there was already a tension between Thailand and the French back in the day about delineating which territory belongs to what is today Cambodia and what is today Thailand.
02:21And the map that was drew in 1907 is actually the map that has been causing a lot of tensions between the two countries to this day.
02:30And that was a colonial map drawn by French.
02:33Now, yesterday, Thai soldiers were injured in a mine explosion.
02:38But why does Bangkok think these mines were placed recently?
02:46That's a very good question.
02:47I mean, there has been a lot of tit-for-tat response and blaming of one another.
02:52It is actually quite difficult to know at the moment, you know, who started the fires first, who did what.
02:59But the question of mines is also quite contentious between the countries.
03:03And given the longstanding nature of the conflict, it is actually quite difficult to know, you know, where the truth actually lies and what happened when and what was the exact sequence of events.
03:15And what does this current situation have to do with why Thailand's current Prime Minister, Shinawatra, is on suspension?
03:23Yeah, that's a very good question.
03:24So, as I mentioned earlier, the current flyer up actually escalated in late May.
03:29And there has been, obviously, numerous attempts by both sides to try and de-escalate the conflict.
03:38However, that hasn't happened.
03:40And what was worse, the Thai Prime Minister, Pedong Tan Shinawatra, had a phone call with Hun Sen, who is no longer the Prime Minister, but he was the long-term Prime Minister of Cambodia.
03:52And now he's the president of the Senate.
03:55It was a private phone call in mid-June where they tried to iron out the situation and try and de-escalate.
04:02What happened after the phone call, however, was that Hun Sen released the phone call on his Facebook page, which actually caused a lot of trouble for Pedong Tan domestically.
04:13She was seen as kowtowing to Hun Sen, saying that, you know, she would do anything to resolve the situation, would actually concede anything to Hun Sen.
04:22So, she was not really seen as coming from a very strong position.
04:25She was also seen as criticising the army general who oversees the border area, which in a country like Thailand that is prone to even military cause is never a good thing.
04:37So, following this leaked phone call, Pedong Tan came under a lot of pressure in Thailand, both from the political opposition, but also from the public.
04:48And as a result of this, she was also, or she started facing legal challenges.
04:54So, the constitutional court in the country was petitioned to investigate Pedong Tan for breaches of ethical conduct based on that particular call.
05:03And the court decided to take on that charge and to investigate.
05:09And as a result of that, the court also decided to suspend her for the time being.
05:14So, at the moment that is being investigated, she is suspended.
05:18So, Thailand now has an acting prime minister.
05:21Yeah, I saw that she even called Cambodia's former leader uncle on the phone call.
05:26So, that, of course, rubbed people the wrong way in Thailand.
05:29Thank you very much, Petra Olderman, for joining us on the programme today.
