Vietnamese and Cambodian border authorities prevented about 1,800 Cambodian from illegally crossing the border into the southern Vietnamese province of Long An on Sunday, a senior border guard official has said.

At 6:30 am, these people, belonging to the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), left the capital city of Phnom Penh in 180 cars for the border area between Cambodia’s Svay Rieng Province and Vietnam’s Long An, Major General Hoang Xuan Chien, Deputy Commander and Chief of the Staff of the Border Guard, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

The group was led by Real Camerin, a parliamentarian of the CNRP, Major General Chien said.

When the group reached Svay Rieng, Cambodian authorities – in coordination with Vietnamese authorities – stopped them from entering Long An, the official said.

Afterward, about 800 of these 1,800 Cambodians walked to an area about 600 meters from border marker No. 203 in Long An’s Moc Hoa District at around 2:00 pm.

The Vietnamese and Cambodian authorities later allowed only some 100 of the 800 people to approach the border marker on condition that they maintained order and would not encroach on Vietnamese territory, Major General Chien said.

There were no incidents in this area when these 100 people gathered at the border marker for a “survey,” as they had registered with the Vietnamese and Cambodian authorities, Tuoi Tre correspondents reported from the scene.  

The Cambodians left the area and returned to Cambodia at 5:00 pm the same day, Major General Chien said.

He had ordered Vietnamese border guards to maintain order and security in the area around the border maker without using any weapons or support tools, the Tuoi Tre correspondents reported.

On June 28, a group of about 250 Cambodians traveled past the same border marker and then crossed deeply into Vietnamese territory.

These intruders then used sticks, crash helmets and flag poles to attack about 20 Vietnamese who tried to stop them, leaving seven locals injured.

It was not until Vietnamese border guards and militiamen arrived that the extremists halted the attack and left Vietnamese territory.

After the incident, the Vietnamese foreign ministry spokesperson, Le Hai Binh, said at a press briefing on June 30 that Vietnam strongly criticized the said violent actions by these Cambodian extremists.

“We request that Cambodian authorities take measures to satisfactorily settle the incident and prevent similar actions from recurring in the future,” Binh underlined

Among these Cambodian extremists were a number of parliamentarians from the opposition CNRP, according to the Vietnamese foreign ministry.

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