By Kent Davis
Phnom Penh, Cambodia – Google Maps and Google Earth instantly deliver geographical information from anywhere on Earth. But what happens when this trusted source dishes out bad data in a politically sensitive location? One error is now in the news of Cambodia, Thailand, Singapore, China, Australia, the USA and other places.
Thailand's "Thai Rath" newspaper has prominently featured the Preah Vihear controversy with Google.
The Cambodian government registered a formal complaint with Google because a critical border shown with its neighbor Thailand is simply wrong. In fact, the images shown are more than 100 years out of date.
Google's inaccurate rendering of the border cuts Cambodia's sacred temple of Preah Vihear in half.
The issue is particularly sensitive because it involves one of Cambodia’s most culturally important sacred sites, Preah Vihear. In 2008, UNESCO recognized Preah Vihear as a “World Heritage Site” with “outstanding universal value” to our planet’s heritage. Thailand has unfortunately rejected Cambodia’s legal ownership of the temple and at least seven Thai and Cambodian soldiers have been killed in skirmishes there in the past two years.
The magnificent mountaintop shrine was built by Cambodia’s Khmer kings beginning in the 11th century. Following warfare in the 15th century, Thailand claimed the temple as its own. In the 20th century the tables turned again, reverting the temple to Cambodian ownership, yet unrest continues. While Thailand presently has more military force, the law has a different view; the International Court of Justice awarded the temple to Cambodia on June 15, 1962.
Our modern story begins on March 26, 1907, when King Chulalongkorn or Rama V of Siam (now Thailand) ceded Preah Vihear and other Khmer lands back to Cambodia in exchange for other territory. As a French protectorate, all mapping related to this transfer was carefully done by engineers with the Service Géographique de l’Indochine. Thailand, however, grew unhappy with the exchange and went so far as to reoccupy the temple just as Cambodia gained independence from France in 1953 under the leadership of Norodom Sihanouk.
Before independence, all local mapping was done by France’s Service Géographique de l’Indochine, but Sihanouk clearly saw that his nation needed its own map service. At the time, Cambodia had one qualified Geographical Engineer (Ingénieur Géographe) who Sihanouk charged with establishing the Khmer Geographic Service (Service Géographique Khmer) under the auspices of the Khmer National Armed Forces (Force Armée Nationale Khmère). For years, the agency worked closely with French and US Army mapping services ensuring that their work met world standards. By 1955, the agency finished compiling the national mapping archive and had completely transferred mapping responsibilities from the French government in Saigon to Cambodia.
Preah Vihear temple in November 2007. Photo by Kent Davis.
On Sihanouk’s orders, the Khmer Geographic Service was also assembling evidence to prove ownership of the disputed border temple of Preah Vihear. The Cambodian people were rewarded with a decisive victory when the International Court of Justice decided in their favor on June 15, 1962, clearly establishing Cambodian ownership of the temple.
Prime Minister Hun Sen has continued Cambodia’s struggle to maintain its rightful control of Preah Vihear. All of the original court documents are available for examination on the International Court of Justice. Google’s world class standing in the information community suggests that they will correct this error soon.
PDF Download in Khmer
This 13 page document in Khmer includes many maps, photos and diagrams that will be helpful to non-Khmer readers. The author, Mr. Chhaysidhy San, also presents a series of links to primary materials, including transcripts of the court case (in English and French) on page 8. [Preah Vihear in Khmer PDF 800k]
Other Useful Links on Preah Vihear Temple
Preah-Vihear.net – Useful maps and historical information
Google Maps Link to Preah Vihear – +14° 23′ 46.00″, +104° 40′ 49.00″
UNESCO “World Heritage Site” Status of Preah Vihear
World Court Documentation of the Preah Vihear Case
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[The magnificent mountaintop shrine was built by Cambodia’s Khmer kings beginning in the 11th century] That is before the Siem Kingdom established, currently Thailand.
Surely the reality of Google maps is that borders are often highly inaccurate though I appreciate that this is a minor affront to Cambodian pride..
What I still do not understand is how the Thais justify their argument that 4.6 square kilometres adjacent to the temple belongs to them. Where is the French map by reference to which the World Court made its decision. I have never been able to find it with the Court’s online papers.
Andrew Hicks
I agree that Google border errors are minor compared to the tension of this entire situation. My personal view is that this temple should be accessible to all people of Khmer blood — and all people who respect Khmer heritage —.whichever side of the border they happen to live on.
Back to the situation at hand, modern cartography is a science of measurement based on reference points. I can’t pretend to understand it but the World Court examined evidence presented by mapping experts on both sides and determined that the temple belongs to the modern country of Cambodia. Period.
Based on your interest, we’ve just added a new 13 page PDF document in Khmer that includes many maps, photos and diagrams that will be helpful to non-Khmer readers. It also has links to a number of original sources that you’ll find useful.
The map just didnot show the contour…this is where the mistake occured and will be part of the dispute for the next century…
The Preah Vihear Temple located at the edge of the cliff that sticking out into the border side of Cambodia 525 meters below.
The question is, in this case the international border is on the mountain top or the borderline located on the ground below, if it is the ground below then is it the cliff that sticking out from the mountain on the side of the border of Thailand is part of the side of Cambodia? Or should it be called part of watershed on the side of the Thailand.
Did you guys have chance to visit and se the actual temple???
You will see why there is a dispute….and will be for the next century
Tom Blass discovers that maps should never be relied upon to provide a definitive description of a boundary, especially when dealing with the Preah Vihear temple complex dispute
Even before it flared up again in 2008, the Preah Vihear temple dispute between Cambodia and Thailand was used by students of international boundaries as a text book example of a number of important principles. Perhaps the most important of these was that maps should never be relied upon to provide definitive descriptions of boundary – especially where those maps have been drawn up by people living on one side of the border. The second, scarcely less important principle is that the longer a government tacitly or implicitly acknowledges an asserted boundary, the harder that boundary becomes to challenge.
Since the temple dispute became ‘live’ again, a number of significant new principles could be added to the pair above. One is simply the importance of recognising the interconnectedness between territory disputes and a host of other issues, relating not only to bilateral relations but also to domestic politics and the state of the economy. Others are that governments do not always have the ability to resolve potential border flashpoints – if they did, then why haven’t they done so already? – and that definitive rulings by international tribunals cannot always provide a cure-all for disagreements between neighbours.
The Preah Vihear temple complex, perched atop a cliff in the Dangrek Mountains which divide Thailand and Cambodia, has been a place of veneration for both the Thai and the Khmer people for nine centuries. The travails involved in reaching it – in combination with its religious significance and artistic merit – have long made the temple an obvious place of pilgrimage. But its location did not become a bone of contention until the governments of French Indochina (part of which is today’s Cambodia) and the Kingdom of Siam (now Thailand) agreed in 1904 to establish a commission for the purpose of delimiting their shared border.
The commission reached its conclusion amicably, agreeing that the watershed of the Dangrek mountain range should define the boundary, and subsequently officials from the Indochinese side – some of whom had been members of the mixed commission – drew up a map in which Preah Vihear lay on the Indochinese side.
At the time, the Siamese government accepted this map in good faith; crucially, a Siamese monk even accepted an invitation to visit the temple as a guest of the French Indochinese government. After all, the commission had met in a collegiate spirit, and no cause for concern was evident until it transpired that the map did not accurately define the watershed – had it done so, the temple would have lain on the Siamese side of the border. In the mid-1950s Thailand occupied the temple; Cambodia, protesting, took the case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.
In its judgment, published in 1962, the court found that the map was not of itself binding, agreeing with Thailand that the initial depiction of the watershed, and hence the boundary, was erroneous. But the court went on to say that since the Siamese authorities had ‘accepted the map without further investigation, [they] could not now plead any error vitiating the reality of their consent,’ and furthermore that they had already passed up several other opportunities in which to raise the matter. Preah Vihear, declared the ICJ, would remain in Cambodia.
Boundary disputes have a habit of flaring up when least expected. In July 2008, Cambodia successfully managed to have Preah Vihear included on the UNESCO World Heritage list, with an incendiary effect on Thai national sentiment. Initially, the Thai government had supported the submission, and for a time the two administrations worked together on a plan whereby a buffer zone around the temple would be regarded as Thai but ultimately administered jointly. Such an arrangement would have in effect made the temple a Cambodian ‘enclave’ within Thailand.
But opposition MPs decried the government’s failure to support what they described as Thailand’s sovereign interests, and relations between the two countries became heated. Troops built up on both sides of the border and a skirmish in October 2008 led to casualties on both sides. In the event the immediate situation was diffused; but the numerous dawns which have since risen over the temple complex have proved to be false, and as of January 2010 this potential conflict seems to be moving away from, not toward, a peaceable and long-lasting solution.
There is no doubting the depth of genuine national feeling keeping the issue on the burner. For many Cambodians, the temple represents a vestige of a Khmer kingdom which was once very much more extensive than it is now; whereas Thais see the 1962 ruling as a perpetuation of an injustice made against them by a former, albeit neighbouring, colonial power.
But there are a number of other contexts to consider. Thailand’s unsettled political situation certainly has a bearing: Preah Vihear is a useful stick with which the opposition can beat the ruling regime. That Cambodia has appointed former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra to the post of special economic adviser can only be seen as a further complication. And then there is the issue of the Overlapping Claims Area (OCA), a 27,000 square-kilometre area in the Gulf of Thailand that has consistently evaded the imposition of a bilaterally-agreed maritime border between Cambodia and Thailand. Like Preah Vihear, the OCA is at once technically complicated and highly sensitive to changes in political temperature – both issues are capable of upsetting each other’s apple cart.
Yet there remains hope that the temple dispute can be resolved. In October last year, the Cambodian government supported a Thai suggestion that the dispute should be submitted to ASEAN for arbitration, which would be an interesting test of the organisation’s capability as a forum for dispute resolution – cynics might argue both that ASEAN has typically shied away from overtly political acts which might upset regional relations and that Cambodia and Thailand have already sought the assistance of a third party (in the form of the ICJ).
Other people’s disputes are always so much easier to solve than one’s own. But a long-lasting solution must inevitably take account of the shared and respective histories of both nations. In 2008 something along these lines was almost achieved; nonetheless, any agreement will remain vulnerable to attempts on either side to whip up xenophobic sentiments for political advantage – patriotism, as Dr Johnson pointed out, is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
Preah Vihear remains an interesting case against which to test another pithy aphorism: Robert Frost’s observation that there are ‘no bad fences, only bad neighbours.’ The Thais and the Khmers are bad neighbours. While they have avoided outright war in the modern period, they remain suspicious of each other, and the potential for mutual recrimination is high. Also, and unfortunately, the ‘fence’ itself is a bad one, and the situation as a whole underlines the way in which poorly demarcated boundaries can become flashpoints capable of souring relations if given the opportunity to do so.
Perhaps the greatest hope resides in the thought that if both parties value Preah Vihear as highly as they profess to, then they share a greater sense of communality than they realise. A more likely prediction, however, is that ‘the temple case’ will remain on the syllabus of students of boundaries for a long time to come.
why Thailand still use incorrect map which is not recognized internationally?
the border dispute is not easily finished if thai side still use use map which to be drawn its self?
does the United Nation has right to force thai to use the correct map to be recognized internationally? Thailand is an aggressor of Cambodia ‘s territory. according to the map in 1904-1907,there is no 4.6 sq km which to be claimed by thai. the dispute on the border between cambodia and thailand will not be ended if thai still use map drawn its self,so the United Nation should crack down and force thai to use the correct map or the border conflict no end