Thailand Says the Temples Are Theirs. So Why Are They Bombing Them?

Editorial – Traju Bulletin Team

For years, Thailand has insisted that the sacred temples along the Cambodian border, most famously Preah Vihear, should belong to them. They invoke history, identity, and culture to justify their territorial claims. But the events of 2025 have revealed something far more troubling: a state that claims a temple is “its heritage” while repeatedly bombing, shelling, and damaging it cannot possibly believe its own narrative.

In July 2025, as border fighting surged, Cambodia’s Preah Vihear Authority announced that Thai artillery and air attacks had struck and damaged the Preah Vihear Temple, a UNESCO World Heritage site that sits atop the Dangrek mountain range.¹ This was not an accidental spillover; further reporting confirmed that the temple came under renewed attack the following day and faced “grave danger” from repeated Thai operations.²

Meanwhile, Thai forces also endangered the surrounding cultural landscape, including the Ta Krabei temple area, another centuries-old Khmer sanctuary located along the disputed frontier.³ And when the conflict flared again in December, Thai F-16 airstrikes struck Cambodian territory, once more impacting temple areas and forcing evacuations.⁴

This pattern is what exposes the hypocrisy.

Thailand’s leaders have argued for decades that the Preah Vihear promontory, including its temple zones, belongs to them. But if Thailand truly believed that, why would it shell a temple it claims to protect? Why would it target structures it insists constitute its cultural patrimony? Heritage is restored, preserved, and honored, not cracked with artillery or rattled by jet strikes.

Cambodia has taken a different path entirely. After a Cambodian soldier was killed in May, Cambodia appealed to diplomacy and international law, seeking peaceful channels rather than retaliation.⁵ In July, after temples were struck, Cambodia documented the damage and updated UNESCO. In December, Cambodia briefed 33 foreign embassies and UN agencies, sharing evidence of Thai aggression against cultural heritage and reiterating its readiness for negotiations.⁶

Thailand responded with more fire.

It is worth remembering that the International Court of Justice ruled in 1962, and reaffirmed in 2013, that Preah Vihear belongs to Cambodia. The temple’s protective status under UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention makes its preservation not only a national duty but an international one. Thailand is a State Party to both the 1954 Hague Convention on cultural property and the 1972 World Heritage Convention. Yet in two separate phases of conflict in 2025, July, and December, temple areas faced destruction or danger from Thai military activity.

This is not an accident. It is a pattern.

And it raises a fundamental question for the international community: How can a state claim ownership of a temple while repeatedly destroying it?

But the deeper outrage is not only that Thailand should never bomb the very temples it claims but that it is legally bound not to. As a State Party to the 1954 Hague Convention and the 1972 World Heritage Convention, Thailand has a positive obligation to protect cultural heritage in times of conflict, including that of neighboring states. This duty is not symbolic; it is a binding commitment to humanity. Yet in 2025, Thailand did not merely fail in its responsibility, it reversed it. Instead of safeguarding the shared heritage of the region, it placed UNESCO temples in the direct path of artillery and jet fire. Instead of cooperating with preservation, it inflicted damage. Instead of honoring the international norms it signed, it treated world heritage as expendable collateral. What kind of nation demands ownership of ancient temples while repeatedly violating the laws designed to protect them?

Cambodia’s position is consistent: the temples are sacred; they must be protected. Thailand’s behavior, by contrast, reveals a territorial claim stripped of cultural sincerity. For Thailand, the temples are not heritage, they are leverage. When political pressure rises, it is Cambodia’s temples that pay the price. A country that destroys what it claims as its own is not defending culture. It is erasing it.

The world must no longer view this conflict through a symmetrical lens. One country has turned to legal institutions, UNESCO mechanisms, and diplomacy. The other has turned to artillery, jets, and destruction.

Cambodia is not asking for sympathy. It is asking for accuracy.

The evidence is already public. The temples that define Khmer history are under threat not from time, erosion, or neglect but from a neighbor who claims to revere them.

Cambodia’s heritage needs no validation; Thailand’s assault on these temples merely exposes the emptiness of its claims. Thailand’s actions only underscore that this heritage is, and has always been, Cambodian.

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