Who Has “forged” Public Documents?

October 16, 2010

WHO HAS “FORGED” PUBLIC DOCUMENTS?

On September 23, 2010 opposition leader Sam Rainsy was sentenced to ten years in prison for “forgery of public documents” and “dissemination of false information.”

The accusation of disseminating false information has been dealt with in the SRP October 15, 2010 statement titled “Who is disseminating false information?” http://tinyurl.com/332mhec

The accusation of forging public documents is related to a French-era 1:100,000 map posted on the Sam Rainsy Party website which has an “unusual” grid on it http://tinyurl.com/yeaoxyf. The Government accuses Sam Rainsy of adding the grid to the original map, therefore falsifying the document. They point to the grid by using the French word "carreaux" while the technical term in both English and French is UTM graticule.

Sam Rainsy has actually used and shown both French-made maps and US-made maps to show that they corroborate one another regarding border delimitation between Cambodia and Vietnam .

The Cambodian government “experts” wouldn’t have made any accusation against Sam Rainsy about the grid, had they first read this explanation by Colonel Edward G. Anderson, Jr. of Corp of Engineers, United State Army (excerpt from "Mapping in Southeast Asia", in The Military Engineers, March-April 1969, page 232): "You would notice the Minutes mention the use of UTM (grid) on 1:100,000 French-made maps. The UTM (standard military grid) with marginal data in English was overprinted on the French maps by the US Army since outbreak of WW II. NATO, France included, adopted UTM grid after 1945."

Var Kim Hong, the head of the Government Border Committee, did not get the point when he said in his accusation against Sam Rainsy at a February 22, 2010 press conference, “'French are ignorant of UTM grid (map making).”

Ironically enough, Var Kim Hong has been accused by King-Father Norodom Sihanouk of falsifying the very same 1:100,000 French-made maps showing the border line between Cambodia and Vietnam, "H.E. Var Kim Hong dared to show me a falsified geographic map of Cambodia, which he deceitfully claimed to be a map [from the pre-war period 1953-1970]." http://tinyurl.com/33xv5jh

SRP Members of Parliament

• Definition of "graticule" in the Merriam-Webster dictionary: The network of lines of latitude and longitude upon which a map is drawn.
• Definition of "UTM" in Wikipedia: The Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinate system is a grid-based method of specifying locations on the surface of the Earth that is a practical application of a 2-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system. It is a horizontal position representation, i.e. it is used to identify locations on the earth independently of vertical position, but differs from the traditional method of latitude and longitude in several respects. The UTM system is not a single map projection. The system instead employs a series of sixty zones, each of which is based on a specifically defined secant transverse Mercator projection.