The Thai Army returned the two captured Cambodian soldiers on Friday. The two sides had already implemented a ceasefire to end five days of combat over competing territorial claims.
Cambodia welcomed the Thai Army’s step. Soldiers’ repatriation comes amid accusations and bickering over whether either side had targeted civilians and breached the laws of war, and sharp nationalist feuding on social media.
The rest of a 20-member group of Cambodian soldiers captured on Tuesday in one of the disputed pockets of land over which the two sides were fighting remain in Thai hands, and Cambodian officials are demanding their release.
The two countries have given differing accounts of the circumstances of the capture. Cambodian officials say their soldiers approached the Thai position with friendly intentions to offer post-fighting greetings, while Thai officials said the Cambodians appeared to have hostile intent and entered what Thailand considers its territory, so they were taken prisoner.
Cambodian Defence Ministry Spokesperson Maly Socheata confirmed that the two wounded soldiers had been handed over at a border checkpoint between Thailand's Surin province and Cambodia's Oddar Meanchey province, and urged the Thai side to promptly repatriate the remaining personnel in accordance with “international humanitarian law.” Thailand says it has been following international legal procedures and was holding the remaining 18 soldiers until it could investigate their actions.
A statement issued Friday by Thailand's 2nd Army Region identified the two repatriated Cambodian soldiers as a sergeant with a broken arm and a gash on his hip, and a second lieutenant who appeared to be suffering from battle fatigue and needed care from his family. It said both men had taken an oath not to engage in further hostilities against Thailand.
Neither man nor the others in Thai custody have been made available for interviews by neutral third parties.
The Cambodian Human Rights Committee, which is a government agency, released a letter addressed to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights claiming that the two soldiers had been tortured and denied medical care. The letter, which offered no evidence to back up its claims, demanded, among other measures, an “impartial investigation by the United Nations or relevant international bodies” into its allegations.
There were other peaceful activities on Friday on both sides of the border as both countries staged tours of the former battle areas for foreign diplomats and other observers, highlighting damage allegedly caused by the other side. The two countries continue to accuse each other of having violated the laws of war with attacks on civilians and the illegal use of weapons.
In addition to infantry combat, the fighting involved artillery duels and Cambodian truck-mounted rocket firing, which Thailand countered with airstrikes, resulting in the deaths of over three dozen civilians and soldiers. In all, over 260,000 people lost their homes.
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