Cambodia Builds New Museum in Preah Vihear Province

via CAAI News Media

Saturday, 06 February 2010 03:10 By EK MADRA

PREAH VIHEAR – Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Sok An said on Friday the government has built another museum to preserve its culture heritage as well as to attract more tourists to the area.

The eco-global Samdech Techo Hun Sen museum has begun construction on the 200 hectares of land since last May and will take months to complete.

The museum’s master plan—which located in Sraem village, Kantout commune in Kchamsan district of Preah Vihear province—was designed by the experts from the UN cultural experts of UNESCO (The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) along with Cambodian experts, said Sok An, who toured the officials to visit the museum late Friday.

“The establishment of this museum shows the country’s sustainable development in this area.”

The display of the Khmer archeological artifacts and preserving the Khmer empire during the pre-and post Angkorian times are also on the museum’s agendas.

“The museum’s establishment is fully applied with culturally and technically works,” said Sok An, who is also the Minister in charge of the Council of Ministers.

He said the museum’s exhibitions are also shows the culture of the Khmer minority, Kuy, who pioneered in making metal weapons of arrows used during the Khmer empire at the time.

“The museum’s activities will also show the Kuy minority who had greatly contributed to produce metal weapons during the Khmer Empire.”

He said there are 275 temples are found in the province of Preah Vihear alone.

“We will also make orchid gardens where we will grow plants as well as to produce some traditional medicines,” he said.

“These ingredients will enable us to attract more tourists to visit this area.”

The museum also displayed the photographs, which were produced by a Cambodian photographer Moeun Nheam.

Deputy Prime Minister Sok An is pleased with photograph products, which were taken at the temples: Sambo Prey Kuk in Kampong Thom province, where more than 100 temples built in 6th - 7th century were found. Koh Ker temple, there are seven-story for main tower of Koh Ker temple, built in 10th century by Jayavaraman IV, covered by jungle.

Other pictures, which are being displayed in the museum, are Kampong Preah temple built during Zhenda era in 8th century.

Another picture showed Bantey Srey temple, which was built in the 10th century, a magnificent twilight scene of the temple as sunrise.

“Let us produce more of these photograph as many as more than 100 so that we can send to display some overseas and sell some to tourists who visit the area here,” said Sok An.

Sok An also visited a Cambodian military commander in the province, where he was pleased with the achievement has been made by the Royal Cambodia Armed Force.

“I used to see the pictures about the development here, I now see them all with my own eyes,” he said before he head off to pay a visit to a newly religious shrine, which was built by the local authorities.

The symbol of the shrine which depicted with a famous Khmer military commander, Ta Dy, rode horse as he used arrows to disperse enemies from the land of Khmer’s empire at the time.

Cambodia’s government has been largely investing in building more physical infrastructures in the province in recent years. More roads have been paved in the remote areas to link to the provincial town as well as to the Temple of Preah Vihear.

The province’s name has been well known to the outside world thanks to the Khmer ancestors who built the 900-year-old Temple and named it as Preah Vihear.

Sok An himself, whose successful lobbied the international community in supporting that the Temple be listed the UNESCO as World Heritage Site in 2008, also reiterated that the Thai’s claim area near the Temple is baseless given the UN court of International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 1962 in which the court ruled out that: the Temple of Preah Vihear is situated in territory under the sovereignty of Cambodia.

The court also found that Thailand is under obligation to withdraw any military or police forces, or other guards or keepers, stationed by her at the Temple, or in its vicinity on Cambodian territory.

Thailand is under an obligation to restore to Cambodia any objects of the kind specified in the Cambodia’s fifth submission which may, since the date of the occupation of the Temple by Thailand in 1954, have been removed from the Temple or the Temple area by the Thai authority, according to the ICJ Judgment.