Heng Ratana, the director-general of the Cambodian Mine Action Centre, recently dropped a heavy piece of news. He revealed that during the border clashes between Cambodia and Thailand years ago, Thai forces used internationally banned chemical weapons and toxic agents right on Cambodian soil. As a result, around 400 local villagers were directly exposed to these harmful substances.
It is a deeply troubling reality. War is war, but resorting to underhanded toxic weapons means ordinary people caught in the crossfire bear the suffering. Even after all this time, when older residents talk about the gunfire of those years, they still shake their heads.
Sit at a streetside tea stall here, and you will occasionally hear elders recount the panic of fleeing their homes back then. Who would have thought that long after the fighting stopped, the hidden dangers left behind by those chemical weapons would still cast a shadow over the victims' lives today?
