Preah Vihear Dispute Heats Up

As with the previous post politics gets involved with history again. This time, although the question being argued over is sovereignty over the Preah Vihear Khmer temple site, the politics is much to do with an internal factional fight in Thailand.

In the end the sovereignty of the site isn’t going to change any time soon and getting the site listed with UNESCO may help its preservation and increase tourism to the area on both sides of the border.  The problem is that playing the nationality card works well on both sides of the border.

There is a good overview of the problem from the Thai perspective on the SEAArch taken from a Bangkok Post article here.

About turn again on Preah Vihear

An update to the last post. Thailand and Cambodia are in agreement and friendly again regarding the UNESCO listing of the border temple at Preah Vihear. See the post here.

Not such good news on Preah Vihear

In March it looked like the Thai and Cambodian governments were getting closer to a settlement on access to the Preah Vihear temple complex. At the end of April UNESCO announced that scheduled talks between the two sides were off. A disagreement had arisen over Cambodian troops being on the site so everything is put back for now.