Fw: Sam Rainsy's lawyer to clarify groundless accusations with the Judge

[Sam Rainsy Party of North America]

April 18, 2010





SAM RAINSY’S LAWYER TO CLARIFY GROUNDLESS ACCUSATIONS WITH THE JUDGE 





On April 20, MP Sam Rainsy’s lawyer will meet with an investigating judge to 
clarify a number of groundless accusations made against the opposition leader 
by the government Border Committee led by Mr. Var Kim Hong.



The accusations are the following:



1-      SGI [1/100,000] map deposited at the United Nations in 1964 and map 
annexed to the 2005 Additional [Border] Treaty, have no grid on them, unlike 
the map shown and disseminated by Mr. Sam Rainsy, [who therefore is accused of 
forging a public document].



Clarification: This is a really strange accusation. All maps have a “grid” on 
them, which is called “graticule”. Graticule is a network of parallels and 
meridians for equal intervals of latitude and longitude on the earth's surface. 
Both the official 1952 French-era SGI 1/100,000 map and the 1966 US Army 
1/50,000 map have a similar graticule on them (see March 23, 2010 Report by 
Professor Régis Caloz, page 7 showing a “coincidence of graticules”). Each 
square of the graticules on the two maps corresponds to a 1-km side square on 
the ground.  



2-      Mr. Sam Rainsy has produced a new map on which he has determined the 
locations of border posts which are different from the locations of border 
posts determined by the joint [Cambodia-Vietnam] expert committee on border 
affairs.



Clarification: Mr. Sam Rainsy has not “produced” any “new map” at all. He has 
only exposed the two above-mentioned existing maps. He has neither determined 
any “locations of border posts” at all. On October 25, 2009, he was led by a 
group of local villagers to the so-called temporary border post # 185, which he 
pulled out because the land owner had complained that that so-called temporary 
border post infringed on her ancestral rice field. As for the locations of the 
three nearby “temporary border posts” # 184, 186 and 187, they were also 
indicated to opposition parliamentarians by local farmers who feared losing 
their land because of alleged border encroachment. After collecting on the spot 
the GPS locations of the four so-called temporary border posts as identified 
with the help of local farmers, Mr. Sam Rainsy asked a professional 
cartographer to spot on the two above-mentioned maps the precise locations of 
the four so-called temporary border posts according to their geographical 
coordinates (see Report by Professor Régis Caloz, page 10, figure 12 showing 
the “localization of the four sites in the border area”). 

We are now happy to learn that the “real” locations of the corresponding border 
posts # 184, 185, 186 and 187 as determined by the joint [Cambodia-Vietnam] 
expert committee on border affairs, are actually situated at a distance of 
respectively 570 m, 516 m, 720 m and 510 m to the East (toward Vietnam) from 
the “border posts [wrongly] determined by Mr. Sam Rainsy” (see explanation 
given with the map most recently presented by the government Border Committee 
to the Court).



3-      Mr. Sam Rainsy has not used the appropriate mapping techniques because 
he has not made the required conversion of datum when taking geographic 
coordinates of border posts as collected with a GPS device under WGS 84 datum 
and entering those data onto a map under Indian 1960 datum.

    

Clarification: It was a theoretical mistake but it had, in this specific case, 
no incidence whatsoever in the final result. This is clearly explained in the 
Report by Professor Régis Caloz, page 10: “The GPS locations under WGS 84, 
directly converted into UTM 48 without change in the ellipsoid and entered onto 
the digitalized Duc Hue map in UTM 48 under Everest (India) 60, coincide with 
the points obtained by following the procedure used for the first assumption 
which logically includes a datum conversion.”



4-      Mr. Sam Rainsy has exposed the geographic coordinates for border post # 
186 at a time when the joint [Cambodia-Vietnam] expert committee on border 
affairs has yet to determine the location of the concerned border post on the 
ground.



Clarification: As stated above, the locations of the four so-called temporary 
border posts # 184, 185, 186 and 187 in Svay Rieng province’s Chantrea district 
have been indicated to SRP elected parliamentarians and councilors by local 
villagers and farmers who are victims of land grabbing associated with border 
encroachment. The corresponding geographic coordinates were obtained on the 
ground with a GPS device.

The government Border Committee should make public the geographic coordinates 
of all the "real and legal" border posts so as to allow public scrutiny.



See related documents in Khmer, English and French at http://tinyurl.com/yyoqa2n



SRP Cabinet


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