Cambodia’s Senate spokesperson put that in writing on 30 August. Thailand’s Senate President had already tied the frozen troop lines to a wait for demarcation. Thailand’s own press body wrote in April that what it did at one crossing is not an exercise of sovereignty over another country’s territory. That same release says the ground there is Thai.
The spokesperson of Cambodia’s Senate issued a three-page text dated Phnom Penh, 30 August 2026. Its paragraph 4 refuses any reading of the Joint Statement of 27 December 2025 that would treat a ceasefire as recognising sovereignty over territory. It refuses any reading that would turn troops being there into rights over the ground. It refuses the same reading of control of the ground.
Paragraph 5 says a ceasefire cannot be used to create new rights over territory. It cannot be used to legalise unlawful occupation. It cannot be used to consolidate “a situation created unilaterally into a fait accompli on the ground”. A fait accompli is a change made to the ground and then defended because it is there.
Cambodia’s state news agency reported the text on 31 August and posted images of its three pages. Those pages match the copy this desk read.
That December ceasefire is a sixteen-point document signed by the two countries’ defence ministers at the General Border Committee, the joint body of their defence ministries. Point 2 freezes where troops are deployed. It bars patrols toward the other side’s position. Point 3 comes next. It says all arrangements under the ceasefire are without prejudice to border demarcation and the international boundary. It also sends the survey and marking work to the Joint Boundary Commission, the joint body the two countries use for that job. Demarcation means putting markers on the ground.
Point 3 governs what the ceasefire’s own steps count for. It does not draw the line.
Cambodia’s Ministry of National Defence recorded 366 civilians kept from going home at O’Smach on 27 August 2026. They were 98 families, and among them 190 women and 101 children. The state wire carried the ministry’s count. The record here does not say how long they have been out. It does not say whether anything is paid to them, or whether any have since gone home.
The Royal Thai Army answered on 27 March 2026, in a text the Thai press carried, calling Cambodia’s displacement figures “grossly inaccurate”. It put the affected at several thousand people in three villages of Sa Kaeo Province. It called them encroachers and said those areas lie wholly inside Thailand’s sovereign territory. Sa Kaeo is not O’Smach. The army’s count is of a different place, and it is not a correction of the ministry’s.
The President of Thailand’s Senate issued his own text on Friday 28 August 2026. Thailand has strictly complied with the Joint Statement, it says. On its account that ceasefire requires both sides to hold current military positions without further troop movements “while awaiting the demarcation process”. He speaks for a chamber of parliament. He is not fixing a boundary, and his text does not claim that he is.
The same text says Cambodia fired first. It says Thailand acted in legitimate self-defence, and that Cambodia is running a victim strategy. This desk read it in full, in the Thai original and in English. Nowhere in it does Thailand claim title to the ground. The reading that paragraphs 4 and 5 refuse is not a reading it offers.
Thailand’s Joint Information Center is the official Thai press body for the border dispute. On 9 April 2026 it published that Thai actions at the Chong Chom crossing “do not represent an exercise of sovereignty over another country’s territory”.
That sentence covers one crossing in Surin Province and what was alleged there in April. It releases no claim anywhere else. The same release says the area had been used as a military base from which to attack Thailand. It says the ground is Thai. Read on Thailand’s own terms, the sentence gives up nothing, because Thailand says none of that ground belongs to another country.
Paragraph 2 of the Cambodian text says Thailand has invoked the fight against transnational crime as a reason for using force, for aggression, and for occupying Cambodian territory. In that April release Thailand gives its own reason for being at Chong Chom as the site’s use as a military base. The release also says the site worked as a large-scale scam compound. It puts transnational crime under Points 8 and 10 of the ceasefire. Point 10 commits both sides to a joint police plan on online scams. Point 8 commits both to spread no fake news.
The Cambodian text answers the Thai one. The Thai one answered remarks Cambodia’s Senate President made on 27 August, at the opening of the Second Inter-Parliamentary Speakers’ Conference in Phnom Penh. This desk did not reach a text of those remarks. The news summaries it read disagree on whether Thailand was named in them.
Paragraph 6 of the Cambodian text says Cambodia does not intend to turn a bilateral dispute into an international issue for any political purpose. The same paragraph asks Thailand to pull its forces out of Cambodian territory, to stop activities that alter the situation on the ground, and to let displaced Cambodian civilians go home safely. Paragraph 8 says that responsible use of regional and international mechanisms should not be regarded as confrontational.
Thailand’s foreign ministry named Cambodia on 11 March 2026 as in breach of Article V of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) the two signed in 2000. That MOU sets how they survey their land boundary. Article V binds each government and its agents not to carry out work that changes the environment of the frontier zone, except work the two do jointly for the survey. The ministry restated its position on 10 July 2026, invoking Point 2 of the ceasefire by number as the frame for what it does on the ground.
The 28 August text says Thailand’s Senate approved a study on the advantages and disadvantages of cancelling MOU 2000 and MOU 2001, the 2001 agreement on the sea boundary. It says the Senate sent that study to the government on 18 May 2026. That date rests on the 28 August text alone. The foreign ministry and the Senate are two offices, and a study is not a decision.