The Thai government has moved decisively to counter accusations from Cambodian leadership regarding its military posture along the shared border. ACM Prapas Sonjaidee, who directs the Joint Information Centre on the Thailand-Cambodia Situation, rejected claims made by Cambodian Senate President Hun Sen that Bangkok had weaponised its crackdown on online scam operations to justify territorial incursion. Hun Sen had levelled these allegations at an international forum, framing Thailand's actions as a contemporary form of warfare designed to obscure the seizure of Cambodian land.
The controversy centres on a fundamental dispute about causation and intent. Prapas argued that Hun Sen's international platform accusations lacked evidentiary foundation and demonstrated the risks of making serious geopolitical claims without verifiable evidence supporting them. He drew a sharp distinction between two separate analytical questions that he contended Hun Sen had deliberately conflated: whether a particular location housed scam operations and whether that location served military purposes. These are not interchangeable categories, Prapas insisted, and conflating them obscures rather than clarifies the actual sequence of events along the frontier.
In laying out Thailand's position, Prapas emphasised that military assessments must be grounded in concrete, documentable facts. If buildings or areas were being used to station troops, stockpile weapons, or conduct military operations, those purposes would be subject to evaluation under applicable international law. However, the existence of criminal enterprise does not automatically justify military occupation. The Thai official stressed that meaningful discussion must begin not with accusations but with transparent examination of timelines, coordinates, and the chronological sequence of military actions—ultimately returning to the question of which side initiated armed confrontation.
Thailand's core contention is that Cambodia fired the first shot, and that this foundational fact has been systematically obscured by framing the dispute as one about cyber-crime operations. Prapas characterised Thailand's military response as a defensive necessity prompted by threats to Thai civilians and armed personnel, not as a pretext-driven land grab. He argued that examining a conflict or border clash requires understanding the complete sequence of escalation rather than beginning analysis only at the moment one party responded to earlier provocations. This methodological distinction carries significant weight in international law and conflict analysis.
A critical element of Thailand's argument concerns the ceasefire agreement between the two nations and the principles governing force deployment in its aftermath. According to the joint statement both countries endorsed, military forces were required to maintain positions established at the ceasefire's onset, refrain from advancing toward each other, and take concrete steps to reduce tensions and inflammatory actions. Prapas contended that remaining in these agreed positions does not constitute occupation but rather compliance with mutual commitments. To simultaneously sign an accord requiring force positioning while unilaterally declaring that positioning as unlawful occupation represents, in his view, a logical and legal impossibility.
The border demarcation question looms large in this dispute, and Prapas argued strongly that military forces, media outlets, and unilateral political statements have no role in determining where international boundaries lie. Such questions must be resolved through the established border mechanisms that both nations have accepted as legitimate forums for resolving demarcation disputes. Allowing military positioning or rhetorical assertions to redraw borders would undermine the entire framework for peaceful frontier management and create incentives for the very conflicts such mechanisms are designed to prevent. This institutional approach reflects broader Southeast Asian norms around border stability and conflict resolution.
Concerning harm to civilians, Prapas endorsed without reservation the principle that non-combatants merit protection, but emphasised that this humanitarian standard must apply symmetrically to both sides of the border. Thai and Cambodian children possess equal rights to safety, and schools in both nations require protection because humanitarian principles transcend nationality. Yet rigorous examination of civilian casualties demands comprehensive analysis including weapon types, firing directions, geographical coordinates, timing, and intended targets—all examined on both sides. Additionally, using civilian locations to support military operations constitutes a war crime and remains prohibited under international humanitarian law regardless of which party commits it.
Hun Sen's invocation of information warfare and psychological operations as tools allegedly targeting Cambodia's international reputation prompted Prapas to acknowledge that disinformation and information manipulation represent genuine twenty-first century challenges affecting all nations. However, he contended that the remedy for information warfare lies not in generating countervailing accusations but in exposing factual evidence, chronologies, and analysis to public scrutiny and debate. When competing narrative frameworks prevent evidence from emerging, societies become trapped in escalating cycles of information conflict with no resolution mechanism. Transparency and willingness to subject one's own claims to independent examination represent the only escape from this destructive dynamic.
Thailand's declared strategic objectives, according to Prapas, unambiguously exclude territorial expansion and exclude viewing Cambodia's population as adversaries. Rather, Thailand seeks to protect its own civilians and military personnel while jointly suppressing transnational scam operations that affect both nations. This framing positions Thailand as pursuing defensive and cooperative goals rather than aggressive expansion. However, Thailand simultaneously maintains the prerogative to defend its borders and population when threatened, a position that mirrors how most nations characterise their security policies.
The pathway forward, as articulated by the Thai official, requires methodical adherence to several principles: comprehensive disclosure of military action timelines rather than selective narratives beginning only with one side's response; reliance on established border resolution mechanisms rather than unilateral claims; joint action against cybercriminal enterprises rather than using such action as political leverage; and sustained commitment to ceasefire terms and force positioning agreements. For Southeast Asian stability broadly, the dispute underscores how border tensions become entangled with information strategy, requiring both transparent disclosure of facts and institutional mechanisms capable of rendering impartial judgments about contested historical sequences and territorial claims.
Ultimately, Prapas framed the choice confronting both nations as fundamental: whether to construct competing narratives that deepen conflict or to establish shared factual foundations enabling genuine negotiation. The question of modern warfare, he suggested, should not be answered through information campaigns and accusatory rhetoric but through demonstrable commitment to revealing complete evidence, restoring meaningful dialogue, and allowing both populations to pursue interests unencumbered by perpetual military confrontation. This represents Thailand's public position as the two neighbours navigate a relationship shaped by complex historical grievances, overlapping security interests, and the intricate demands of managing a contested frontier within a rules-based regional order.
