How a gunshot at dawn broke a mother's heart, and left a prime minister fighting for her job
When Thai soldiers approached through dense foliage, from opposing positions in the Emerald Triangle's contested mountains and passes, Cambodian Second Lieutenant Suon Roun was not yet in his trousers.
Like most things in this verdant Triangle, where Cambodia, Thailand and Laos loosely meet, what happened next – and why – remains in dispute.
Still, some things are known. The two sides clashed. Their gunfire, heavy with history, then rippled from the mountaintops to the capital cities in the form of nationalistic fervour so white-hot that by Tuesday, a Thai court was ordering the suspension of Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra while it considered whether to sack her for good over a servile phone call with Cambodia's de facto ruler Hun Sen.
Also known is this: Second Lieutenant Suon Roun is dead.
Photos of the 48-year-old's punctured face and body, shown to this masthead by his family, suggest he died instantly on the mountain. Suon Roun's elderly mother, Em Heap, has now outlived eight of her 12 children.
His younger brother, Suon Eung, relays the explanation for Suon Roun's death that he received from the Cambodian military commander who was present for the fighting.
'The sky was foggy at the mountaintop,' Suon Eung says. 'He [the commander] said, 'We were sitting to make coffee and they opened fire'. Someone screamed, 'Get inside the trench'.
'They exchanged fire with the Thais, and the fighting went on for about 20 minutes. Then the Thais raised a hand to signal negotiations, and the fighting stopped.
'He said that Thai soldiers were shot too … an aircraft came to pick up their wounded soldiers.'
The commander who passed this information to Suon Eung declined to speak to this masthead.
Thailand denies firing the first shots, and that any of its men were injured.
In a statement issued on the day of the fighting, Thai military spokesman Major General Winthai Suvaree said Cambodian troops had entered a disputed area in violation of 'existing agreements'. The Thai military later released aerial images that it said showed Cambodian encroachment. The Cambodians say they have occupied the trench in question for years.
On May 28, Winthai says, the Thais on the mountain went to talk to their opposing numbers, 'following previously established procedures'. But 'upon arrival at the location, the Cambodian security troops misunderstood the situation and initiated the use of weapons … the Thai side then returned fire in response.'
Following the incident, both nations imposed border closures and restrictions. Cambodia even banned the screening of Thai movies and soap operas.
The matter has now taken on global significance because of Paetongtarn's suspension. Not only is Thailand a major South-East Asian economy, it is wedged between Cambodia, commonly viewed as a client state of China, and war-torn Myanmar. In addition, the billionaire Shinawatra clan's decades-long presence at the top of Thai politics and culture appears to be crumbling.
This political intrigue and geo-strategy is of little interest to Em Heap. She is 85 years old and living in a small wooden home, not dissimilar to a miniature, abandoned shearing shed, with five family members and no bathroom. Such an age is a rarity in Cambodia: if members of her generation weren't wiped out by the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, the slog of peasant life in remote Cambodia often finished the job.
The distressing history of her own family bears this out. In the 1990s, two of her sons and her husband were killed by the last vestiges of the Khmer Rouge, which was active around their village of Kampenh until 1997. Another son died when he stepped on a Khmer Rouge land mine about the same time.
One son died in a car accident in 2002, and a fifth, a paratrooper, died from disease in 2017. Two daughters also died from malaria during the Khmer Rouge reign.
'I feel very upset – I have lost so many children,' Em Heap tells this masthead. 'I didn't know what to do. I feel so sorry [that Suon Roun] was killed, not only him but my other children. He had no wife – he just served his country.'
Suon Roun joined the military in 1996, about the time his father was killed. He rarely came home. His mother and surviving siblings put that down to his dedication to the nation and his low-key personality.
'My brother liked being alone and didn't like crowds,' Suon Eung says. 'If you asked a question, you got a one-word answer.'
Photos from Suon Roun's early service show him touring the ancient Preah Vihear Temple, about 100 kilometres from the Emerald Triangle. The World Heritage-listed temple precinct and its surrounds were the scene of a border dispute from 2008 to 2011. More than 30 Thais and Cambodians, including civilians, were killed.
The International Court of Justice settled the temple issues in favour of Cambodia in rulings in 1962 and 2013, but close to 200 kilometres of borderlands remain contested.
In the current climate of ultra-patriotism, tensions are now rising over another temple called Ta Muen Thom. Winthai, the Thai military spokesman, had to calm his countrymen down on Wednesday when Google Maps appeared to place it in Cambodia. Cambodia is seeking ICJ adjudications on Ta Muen Thom and other locations, including the Emerald Triangle.
Amid the political sparring after Suon Roun's death, two good things happened: he was posthumously promoted to the rank of captain, and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, son of former leader Hun Sen, sent a close adviser to Kampenh with a bag of money. The family is using it to build a larger home.
Hun Sen was playing golf on the day Suon Roun died. The 72-year-old's public Telegram channel contains close to 150 photos and videos of him putting and driving on May 28 alone.
Such shows of sporting prowess, health and stamina – and there is a lot of golf on his channels – are important for the man who has ruled Cambodia with suppression and smarts for 40 years.
While his son is now prime minister, Hun Sen has demonstrated through the recent border saga that he is still calling the shots. On June 15, Paetongtarn Shinawatra wanted to discuss the dispute; it was Hun Sen, an old family friend, whom she phoned.
Hun Sen recorded the private conversation, which quickly found its way to the media. Thais were outraged to hear their prime minister calling Hun Sen 'uncle' and professing to 'love and respect' him.
'... if there is anything you want, please tell me directly. Just lift up the phone and tell me,' Shinawatra said.
In a major faux pas in Thailand, she also criticised a senior military man, saying he was an opponent and wanted to 'look cool'.
Paetongtarn's already fragile coalition almost collapsed. Then, 36 senators brought a petition to the Constitutional Court, accusing her of dishonesty and breach of ethical standards in relation to the phone call.
'My true intention in the leaked conversation, my true intention 100 per cent, was to work for the country to maintain our sovereignty and save the lives of all our soldiers,' she told reporters.
It's unclear when the court will rule.
Why did Hun Sen leak the call, and was it worth ending decades of friendship and partnership with Shinawatra's father, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra?
Analysts say Hun Sen was upset about border closures. He also took umbrage at Bangkok's reframing of a Cambodian troop repositioning as a 'troop withdrawal'.
Matters of sovereignty are a hot-button issue for Cambodians and have been previously harnessed by opposition figures. Some of the more heated protests in recent times, including among the diaspora, have involved land agreements with foreign nations.
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Lowy Institute South-East Asia program director Susannah Patton sees Hun Sen's latest game of 'three-dimensional chess' as a nationalistic play aimed at distracting the public from other issues and affirming him as the defender of Cambodia.
'I think there's a feeling that Cambodia has a lot of troubles on its hands, potentially with declining private investment and tourism from China,' she says.
'With the risk of US tariffs, the economic outlook is quite bad. And then they've also got problems with Vietnam, but it's much harder to really openly stick it to them.
'I assume that he's made the judgment that Shinawatra may be limited in terms of how useful [she is] as a relationship, and that he's better served politically by having a more kind of contentious relationship with Thailand.'
Approaching the Emerald Triangle, this masthead is stopped from travelling the extra couple of kilometres to the scene of the May 28 fighting. But the military men at the Cambodian checkpoint are friendly.
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One of them points to the ridgeline a few hundred metres off the right-hand side of the road. 'That is Laos,' he says. To the left side, he gestures towards 'Cambodia and Thailand'.
But where, precisely, does Thailand begin? He smiles: 'Nobody really knows'.
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ABC News
35 minutes ago
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Sydney Morning Herald
an hour ago
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Amid twisted metal and tangled monks' robes, Cambodians count the cost of five days of war
Samraong, Cambodia: Teuk Buntoeun was picking through shrapnel and rubble when his still-ringing ears caught the spin from Bangkok. It went like this: Thailand had sent an F-16 fighter jet over the dividing Dangrek mountains, precision-pounding Cambodian military positions. The news was already all over the global media. The Thai military reported that the mission was successful – and fair. Unlike Cambodia, which it has accused of breaching the Geneva Conventions, Thai strikes 'do not target civilian areas or any locations unrelated to military operations', the military claimed. 'But this is not true,' Buntoeun says, gesturing to the damage all around him. 'This is a pagoda.' In his telling, more than 20 people were at the Ta Moan Sen Chey pagoda, a Buddhist place of worship, when the bombing started shortly before 5pm on July 24, the first day of what would become a five-day war between Thailand and Cambodia. 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The kindergarten room is the worst hit. School principal Lay Phalla crunches over tiles, past a shrapnel-pocked whiteboard and walls covered in torn, dangling posters, and scoops up a shorn laptop near a tiny pink chair. He flings the broken equipment onto the teacher's desk. 'We don't know what will be the next step,' he says. 'We will ask for donations.' The school and pagoda are a few kilometres from the ancient Ta Moan Thom temple, which proved to be at the centre of the five-day war that ended last week after claiming dozens of lives, including civilians, and displacing hundreds of thousands of Thais and Cambodians. Both sides claim Ta Moan Thom as sovereign territory, along with several other temples along swaths of ambiguous border between the two countries. Importantly, these temples are on the Dangrek mountain range, the last stronghold of the Khmer Rouge in the 1990s, and vital geography should Thailand and Cambodia ever enter into full-scale war. It was on to Ta Moan Thom that a group of Cambodian citizens descended in February to sing patriotic songs, infuriating the Thai troops stationed there and politicians in Bangkok. Thai Defence Minister Phumtham Wechayachai, currently the acting prime minister, worried at the time that the stunt could needlessly escalate Cambodian-Thai tensions. It did. The most serious precursor to the armed clashes was a May 28 border skirmish at an area known as the Emerald Triangle – the convergence of Thailand, Cambodia and Laos – that left a Cambodian soldier dead. As in the most recent fighting, both sides accused each other of striking first that time. The rhetoric and war posturing mounted. Asked why his school was bombed, Lay Phalla suggests 'confusion'. He says the initial May 28 incident prompted his staff to dig a rudimentary bomb shelter at the front of the school, made of sandbags and tarpaulin – just in case. 'When they saw the bunker, maybe they thought it was a military base,' he says of the Thai military. 'This is just my thinking.' Phalla and achars at the pagoda insist there were no soldiers or military installations anywhere near their school and temple when they were bombed, an assertion this masthead could not verify. The Thai military did not respond to questions, or to photo evidence of civilian-infrastructure bombing. Breaches defy Trump's ceasefire The true death toll from the five-day war remains unclear, though it is believed to be upwards of 40. Thailand appears to have borne the bulk of civilian casualties. In one incident – an alleged Cambodian rocket attack on a petrol station in Si Sa Ket province – eight people, including children, were killed, Thai media has reported. Elsewhere, Thailand has accused Cambodia of firing heavy artillery towards hospitals and schools, which the government says breaches the Geneva Conventions on war. Towns on both sides of the border emptied when the fighting broke out, as terrified citizens sought shelter with faraway families, or at camps set up for internally displaced people. The fighting has quietened since a ceasefire came into effect at midnight on July 28. US President Donald Trump, who told Thailand and Cambodia to stop fighting or suffer terrible trade deals, has both claimed and been given the credit for the truce. On the day Trump's administration announced a 19 per cent tariff rate for both countries – well below the 36 per cent he had earlier indicated would come into force – this masthead spotted a giant electronic billboard in the middle of a Siem Reap roundabout labelling Trump the 'President of Peace'. 'Support Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize,' it read. However, both sides have claimed ceasefire breaches since the truce took effect last week. At least 16 Cambodian soldiers were taken prisoner the morning after the truce was signed, and at the time of writing, they were still in Thailand. One is Vy Chhorvon. We visit his parents as they wait for news about their son. They sit at the end of a wooden table, his father scrolling Facebook for news, his mother weeping, surrounded by close to 50 neighbours offering them support. With no information from their government or Thailand about the fate of their son, the family acts the next day on social media rumours that there will be a handover at a border crossing called Choam, more than two hours' drive away. Following the same rumour, we find them again at the crossing. They are still waiting, still unsure if their son is among two soldiers suspected to have been killed. The prisoner handover does not happen. While the fighting may have eased in this part of South-East Asia, underlying tensions between Thailand and Cambodia – and the propaganda war on social media – have not. Fake pictures of downed Thai F-16 fighter planes circulated online on the first day of fighting. And one of the most serious accusations levelled at Thailand is that it dropped deadly, toxic smoke onto Cambodian positions at a temple called Ta Krabei. There is no evidence yet to support this and it is vehemently denied by Thailand. But Mao Sophal, the wife of dead Cambodian soldier Cheuk Chhon, is convinced it was the smoke that killed her husband. He died on Friday after vomiting blood for days in hospital, she says. At Chhon's Buddhist funeral, mourners have cut out a cardboard photo of his face and taped it onto a mannequin dressed in military uniform. Sophal, kneeling near her husband's yet-to-be cremated body, is so overcome with grief she needs help getting back to her feet. But Chhon's uncle Pich Sokun explains it was not toxic smoke that killed his nephew. He says the pair were fighting together on Ta Krabei, and Chhon came down from the mountain feeling sick on July 27. Whatever 'red and grey' substance that allegedly made the Cambodian soldiers feel like they were 'choking' – forcing them to cover their mouths and noses with bandannas – wafted down from a Thai plane the following day, Sokun says. A mad dash for safety Days after the shaky ceasefire, Cambodian refugee camps remain crowded with the families heeding provincial authorities' advice that it is too soon to go home. One of the youngest seeking refuge at a sprawling camp near Samraong City is Lin Kakada. She was born on July 24, the day the fighting began. Her mother, Hong Srey Rith, says she felt the labour pains start as her family were packing up their belongings to flee. Mother and baby spent one night in hospital but have been at the camp ever since, sitting in a wagon parked by a fetid reservoir, taking their shade from a tarpaulin. Srey Rith says she needs baby formula to supplement her breastmilk, but it is too expensive. 'It is very difficult,' she says of her living conditions. 'It is windy. It is raining. It is hot. I want to go home, but the authorities don't want that yet. There's a chance there will be more fighting. I'm afraid, too, that it will continue.' The camp's presumed oldest resident shelters about 100 metres away. Ron Touch is 98 years old and mostly blind. Even with the horrors she has survived in her lifetime – the Khmer Rouge, the international wars, the civil wars – this fighting has rattled her. 'Yes, I'm scared,' she says. Loading Over three days on the frontline, we ask the same question to dozens of Cambodians: do you want the ceasefire to hold, or do you want your soldiers to push on and take strategic territory and temples? To a man and woman, from farmers to frontline soldiers, without hesitation, Cambodians say they want peace.
The Age
an hour ago
- The Age
Amid twisted metal and tangled monks' robes, Cambodians count the cost of five days of war
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One of those people, a lay worker, was crushed under the collapsed walls of a dormitory and killed. 'His name was Kheang. He was 73 years old,' says Buntoeun, the pagoda's chief achar – a lay person responsible for a temple's good order and certain rituals. Kheang had been homeless until Buntouen offered him shelter three years ago. The pagoda, built in 2011, is a now mess of steel and shattered roof tiles. The concrete at the front is gouged and strewn with debris. Among it all is piece of bomb printed with the words, 'for use on MK82', made in 2023. Buntoeun and his deputy, Prum Chenda, hurry us along through giant boulders to the obliterated dormitory where Kheang died and two others were injured. Abandoned orange robes belonging to the monks who fled lie tangled in twisted tin and timber. The cost of war Ta Moan Sen Chey Primary School, which held classes for its 30 young pupils right up to July 23 – the day before the fighting – is a short walk away. The kindergarten room is the worst hit. School principal Lay Phalla crunches over tiles, past a shrapnel-pocked whiteboard and walls covered in torn, dangling posters, and scoops up a shorn laptop near a tiny pink chair. He flings the broken equipment onto the teacher's desk. 'We don't know what will be the next step,' he says. 'We will ask for donations.' The school and pagoda are a few kilometres from the ancient Ta Moan Thom temple, which proved to be at the centre of the five-day war that ended last week after claiming dozens of lives, including civilians, and displacing hundreds of thousands of Thais and Cambodians. Both sides claim Ta Moan Thom as sovereign territory, along with several other temples along swaths of ambiguous border between the two countries. Importantly, these temples are on the Dangrek mountain range, the last stronghold of the Khmer Rouge in the 1990s, and vital geography should Thailand and Cambodia ever enter into full-scale war. It was on to Ta Moan Thom that a group of Cambodian citizens descended in February to sing patriotic songs, infuriating the Thai troops stationed there and politicians in Bangkok. Thai Defence Minister Phumtham Wechayachai, currently the acting prime minister, worried at the time that the stunt could needlessly escalate Cambodian-Thai tensions. It did. The most serious precursor to the armed clashes was a May 28 border skirmish at an area known as the Emerald Triangle – the convergence of Thailand, Cambodia and Laos – that left a Cambodian soldier dead. As in the most recent fighting, both sides accused each other of striking first that time. The rhetoric and war posturing mounted. Asked why his school was bombed, Lay Phalla suggests 'confusion'. He says the initial May 28 incident prompted his staff to dig a rudimentary bomb shelter at the front of the school, made of sandbags and tarpaulin – just in case. 'When they saw the bunker, maybe they thought it was a military base,' he says of the Thai military. 'This is just my thinking.' Phalla and achars at the pagoda insist there were no soldiers or military installations anywhere near their school and temple when they were bombed, an assertion this masthead could not verify. The Thai military did not respond to questions, or to photo evidence of civilian-infrastructure bombing. Breaches defy Trump's ceasefire The true death toll from the five-day war remains unclear, though it is believed to be upwards of 40. Thailand appears to have borne the bulk of civilian casualties. In one incident – an alleged Cambodian rocket attack on a petrol station in Si Sa Ket province – eight people, including children, were killed, Thai media has reported. Elsewhere, Thailand has accused Cambodia of firing heavy artillery towards hospitals and schools, which the government says breaches the Geneva Conventions on war. Towns on both sides of the border emptied when the fighting broke out, as terrified citizens sought shelter with faraway families, or at camps set up for internally displaced people. The fighting has quietened since a ceasefire came into effect at midnight on July 28. US President Donald Trump, who told Thailand and Cambodia to stop fighting or suffer terrible trade deals, has both claimed and been given the credit for the truce. On the day Trump's administration announced a 19 per cent tariff rate for both countries – well below the 36 per cent he had earlier indicated would come into force – this masthead spotted a giant electronic billboard in the middle of a Siem Reap roundabout labelling Trump the 'President of Peace'. 'Support Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize,' it read. However, both sides have claimed ceasefire breaches since the truce took effect last week. At least 16 Cambodian soldiers were taken prisoner the morning after the truce was signed, and at the time of writing, they were still in Thailand. One is Vy Chhorvon. We visit his parents as they wait for news about their son. They sit at the end of a wooden table, his father scrolling Facebook for news, his mother weeping, surrounded by close to 50 neighbours offering them support. With no information from their government or Thailand about the fate of their son, the family acts the next day on social media rumours that there will be a handover at a border crossing called Choam, more than two hours' drive away. Following the same rumour, we find them again at the crossing. They are still waiting, still unsure if their son is among two soldiers suspected to have been killed. The prisoner handover does not happen. While the fighting may have eased in this part of South-East Asia, underlying tensions between Thailand and Cambodia – and the propaganda war on social media – have not. Fake pictures of downed Thai F-16 fighter planes circulated online on the first day of fighting. And one of the most serious accusations levelled at Thailand is that it dropped deadly, toxic smoke onto Cambodian positions at a temple called Ta Krabei. There is no evidence yet to support this and it is vehemently denied by Thailand. But Mao Sophal, the wife of dead Cambodian soldier Cheuk Chhon, is convinced it was the smoke that killed her husband. He died on Friday after vomiting blood for days in hospital, she says. At Chhon's Buddhist funeral, mourners have cut out a cardboard photo of his face and taped it onto a mannequin dressed in military uniform. Sophal, kneeling near her husband's yet-to-be cremated body, is so overcome with grief she needs help getting back to her feet. But Chhon's uncle Pich Sokun explains it was not toxic smoke that killed his nephew. He says the pair were fighting together on Ta Krabei, and Chhon came down from the mountain feeling sick on July 27. Whatever 'red and grey' substance that allegedly made the Cambodian soldiers feel like they were 'choking' – forcing them to cover their mouths and noses with bandannas – wafted down from a Thai plane the following day, Sokun says. A mad dash for safety Days after the shaky ceasefire, Cambodian refugee camps remain crowded with the families heeding provincial authorities' advice that it is too soon to go home. One of the youngest seeking refuge at a sprawling camp near Samraong City is Lin Kakada. She was born on July 24, the day the fighting began. Her mother, Hong Srey Rith, says she felt the labour pains start as her family were packing up their belongings to flee. Mother and baby spent one night in hospital but have been at the camp ever since, sitting in a wagon parked by a fetid reservoir, taking their shade from a tarpaulin. Srey Rith says she needs baby formula to supplement her breastmilk, but it is too expensive. 'It is very difficult,' she says of her living conditions. 'It is windy. It is raining. It is hot. I want to go home, but the authorities don't want that yet. There's a chance there will be more fighting. I'm afraid, too, that it will continue.' The camp's presumed oldest resident shelters about 100 metres away. Ron Touch is 98 years old and mostly blind. Even with the horrors she has survived in her lifetime – the Khmer Rouge, the international wars, the civil wars – this fighting has rattled her. 'Yes, I'm scared,' she says. Loading Over three days on the frontline, we ask the same question to dozens of Cambodians: do you want the ceasefire to hold, or do you want your soldiers to push on and take strategic territory and temples? To a man and woman, from farmers to frontline soldiers, without hesitation, Cambodians say they want peace.
