Pueng Pung’s life has been determined by war and Thai-Cambodian border politics. Originally from Si Sa Ket province, the 64 year old spent her childhood freely travelling across the border.
Her family often commuted between Khun Han district in Si Sa Ket to Varin district in Cambodia’s Siem Reap province. The journey was tough, and usually involved seven nights walking through the forest. But it was pleasant. “The people living in the surrounding villages were our brothers and sisters,” she recalled.
When she was 12, her family moved to Cambodia. But after the Khmer Rouge took over the region, the border was closed in the early 1970s. She could not leave Cambodia and was forced to do labour work by the Khmer Rouge. “Life was tough. Many people died,” she said.
In Thailand, Sawien Supong, 44, learned from her parents that she had relatives in Cambodia. “But we had to wait until the border was reopened,” she said.
In 1986, after the political situation in Cambodia improved, Ms Sawien went in search of her missing relatives in Cambodia and found her cousin Pueng Pung and her children.
“It was not hard to find her,” Ms Sawien said. “Everyone knows everybody in that small border village. I just asked who came from Thailand.”
Recalling when they were reunited, Pueng Pung said, “We were very excited to meet our relatives. Tears welled up in my eyes.”
Since then, separated relatives have tried to visit each other whenever the opportunity arose.
Pueng Pung and Ms Sawien met up again last month in Si Sa Ket when dozens of Thai and Cambodian people gathered at Khao Phra Viharn National Park to share stories about their villages and ancestry.
The Thailand Research Fund sponsored villagers in the Thai-Cambodian border area to conduct “cultural mapping” research. The findings show that many of them have a shared ancestry. The family members, however, have been divided by a series of border conflicts over the past 45 years.
A BROADER BORDER
The latest border conflict was a result of the dispute over the area surrounding Preah Vihear Temple. Tensions rose before the International Court of Justice ruling on Nov 11, 2013, which confirmed Cambodia had sovereignty over the temple. However, the court did not decide who had ownership of the 4.6-square-kilometre disputed area surrounding the temple.
Securities officers from both sides closed “natural” border crossings the locals had used for years, and forced them to go through formal checkpoints. Despite the stricter border controls, locals still snuck through the old forest crossings, especially people residing in small border communities.
Des Klinklom, a 62-year-old Thai woman who has relatives in Cambodia, said she walks across to the Cambodian side every month and is familiar with the paramilitary officers. “They know who I am,” she told Spectrum. Sometimes she even crosses the border without a passport.
She usually takes Thai garlic to exchange for rattan on the Cambodian side. “I have relatives and friends there. We are no different, Thai or Cambodian. We have been living here together for so long.”
TORN BY WAR
Sharing a vast border stretching more than 800 kilometres, its inevitable that Thais and Cambodians share a cultural history due to their proximity.
Ms Sawien said in the past people from her home town in Khan Tarom sub-district often visited Sai Noi sub-district in Siem Reap province.
Thais crossed the border to trade salt and other goods for dried fish and rattan from their Cambodian neighbours.
But the border communities started to grow apart in the 1960s, starting with the Preah Vihear Temple dispute.
Chay Mathong, a 74 year old from the border village of Ban Phum Sarol in Si Sa Ket, recalled that after the international court ruled in 1962 that Cambodia had sovereignty over Preah Vihear Temple, “me and four or five other friends were hired by Thai authorities to dig holes for setting up demarcation poles surrounding the temple”.
“During that period, there were shootouts along the border,” Mr Chay said. “Villagers volunteered to patrol the area with the security officers and got five baht per day for helping patrol the area.”
It was during the Khmer Rouge years from 1970-1979 that villagers from both sides suffered the most. Ban Phum Sarol was attacked by cannon fire several times. A group of Thai students believing in socialist ideology went into hiding in the forests near the village.
People were forced to relocate from their homes near the border and land mines were planted.
Many Cambodians fled to the Thai side. Some lost their legs because of the land mines. “People at Ban Phum Sarol set aside an area for Cambodian people who fled the war,” Mr Chay said. “We called the place Non Kha Kad or ‘the hilly slope for people with missing legs.’ ”
The Thai government encouraged people to move away from the border by making Huay Sala a protected national forest. A reservoir, Huay Ta Joo, was constructed for security reasons.
In that period, people lived with paranoia and a mistrust of each other.
“Cultural affinity was replaced by the feeling of nationalism,” said Srisakra Vallibhotama, a respected anthropology professor.
“The lifestyle of people living along the border changed. Normally, marginalised people are often ignored. But the community thrived on trust, with people supporting each other. Their living history bound people together.
“Today, the local villagers are facing pressure from policy-makers at the top. Outside investors plan to profit from commercial concessions for business activities surrounding Preah Vihear Temple. Local communities are weakened. Some local villagers have left to work odd jobs in the city to survive.”
TIES THAT BIND
YOU ARE HERE: Suthien Piewjan, 37, shows a cultural map of Ban Dan village in Si Sa Ket.
Despite the years of tension at the border, the local communities are keen to reconnect.
Suthien Piewjan, 37, from Ban Dan village in Si Sa Ket, is one of 10 people in his community working with the Thailand Research Fund to conduct a social history of his village.
Mr Suthien and his team began by asking four elderly people about the history of the village.
“I traced the first history of the village to 1887 when a group of settlers came to the village to escape a smallpox epidemic in a nearby village,” he told Spectrum. “In those days, people freely walked across the border to the adjacent Cambodian village until the border was closed in 1972.”
Mr Suthien was also given the contacts and whereabouts of relatives living in Cambodia.
Having enough information, Mr Suthien went to Cambodia in June to find his relatives. He travelled with six other villagers on a similar quest. “We walked through the Cha-Ngam natural pathway which is too narrow for a cart,” he said.
The group walked down the hill into Cambodia and found a rest area called Tam Nak Prasang. “As told by the senior villagers, the symbol of the community is a pile of rocks where the locals pay respect to the spirits in the woods and a pond,” he said. “I knew then that I had gone to the right place.”
The group walked further to another village that they pronounced in Thai as Vielpo consisting of around 700 people. There, the group looked for people with Thai ancestry.
After six months of research Mr Suthien said, “I found 27 people with Thai ancestry in Vielpo village including some of my relatives.”
Mr Suthien introduced to Spectrum Soi Som, a 40-year-old relative who came from Cambodia to Khao Phra Viharn National Park in Thailand to see his cousin and other villagers and be briefed on the findings of the cultural mapping.
“He’s my brother,” Mr Suthien said.
WHAT’S IN A NAME
The cultural maps being worked on are essentially modern threads to fill in the missing gaps created by the Khmer Rouge era and the recent disputes over the temple.
They also help provide greater information on the Kui ethnic group and the shared ancestry of the people of northeast Thailand and the upper regions of Cambodia.
One of them is Muy Pok, a 69-year-old Cambodian originally from Buri Rum province.
When she was young she would follow her father, a mahout, across the border at Si Sa Ket to Oddar Meanchey in Cambodia.
Muy Pok and her siblings were stranded on the Cambodian side after the border closed in 1972.
“I could not go back, even though I had planned to stay there for only a couple of months,” she said in Thai.
She was forced to work by Khmer Rouge soldiers. “We were afraid that Khmer Rouge soldiers might have killed us if they had found out that we were Thai,” she said. “So we spoke in Cambodian and did not teach our children to speak Thai.”
She subsequently changed her Thai name of Khamnang Jattakarn to the Cambodian one, Muy Pok. Holding a Cambodian ID, she returned to reunite with her Thai relatives in 1988.
Nowadays, as part of the reuniting process, villagers organise religious ceremonies together to pay tribute to their ancestors.
Last year, a group of Thais from Ban Phum Sarol village travelled to Ban Krachan in Choam Khsant district, Preah Vihear province, to offer robes to Buddhist priests at a monastery.
During the full moon of the 10th lunar month last year, Thai and Cambodian villagers held a San Don Ta ritual at the historic Don Tual Temple in Thailand to pay tribute to their ancestry.
Locals performed the San Don Ta rite by presenting offerings including a pig’s head and a variety of food and fruit.
People dressed in traditional colourful outfits for the ceremony.
“It is good to revive traditions together because these ritual instil a sense of kinship among border people,” said Rungwichit Kham-ngam, a community-based researcher at the Thailand Research Fund.
FAMILIAR FACE: Thai woman Des Klinklom, 62, crosses the border to Cambodia so often she is acquainted with the rangers in the area.
STAMP OF APPROVAL: Muy Pok, a 69 year old originally from Buri Rum, with her Cambodian passport.
CAMBODIAN COUSINS: Sawien Supong, third left, greets her cousin Pueng Pung, in white, during a reunion of relatives from both sides of the border.
BORDER INSECURITY
1887
People start settling in Kantharalak district in Si Sa Ket province
1959
The government of Cambodia asks the International Court of Justice to rule on the dispute over Preah Vihear Temple
1962
The International Court of Justice rules that the Preah Vihear Temple belongs to Cambodia
1970-1979
Life under Communism/Khmer Rouge. In 1972 the border is closed and many Thai citizens who have crossed freely over the years are stuck on the Cambodian side and subject to life under the brutal Khmer Rouge regime.
1988-2008
The border situation is stabilised after Thai Prime Minister Gen Chatichai Choonhavan announces a policy to turn Indochina “from a battlefield into a marketplace”
2008
A new wave of border disputes is triggered by political sabre-rattling from Cambodia’s listing of Preah Vihear Temple as a Unesco World Heritage site
2009
Cambodia closes off access to Preah Vihear from the Thai side at Si Sa Ket’s Kantharalak district due to the conflict over the 4.6-square-kilometre surrounding area claimed by both countries
2013
The International Court of Justice does not rule who has the authority over the disputed area
2016
Cambodian Defence Minister Tea Banh says negotiations to allow passage to Preah Vihear from the Thai side are under way but he does not give a definite timeline
