Every country commemorates its wars in its own way and Cambodia is no exception. And as gunshots continue to ring out across the disputed Thai border, authorities are preparing Cambodians to mark May 28 as a day of national remembrance, marking the start of last year’s armed conflict with Thailand.
At the Win-Win Memorial, built to commemorate the 30 years of civil war that transformed Cambodia into a failed state, murals emphasizing the suffering, courage and solidarity of the Khmer people and their army during the undeclared border war of 2025 are now carved in stone.
The hero is Sgt. Suon Roan. He was killed in a trench in Mom Bei – an area of the Dangrek Mountains where the Cambodian border meets Thailand and Laos – after Thai troops allegedly crossed and opened fire.
“The day our heroic soldier was shot dead by Thai troops on May 28… This day is a reminder of the invasion and illegal violations of Cambodia’s sovereignty, which the Cambodian people must remember,” said Hun Sen, Senate President and father of Prime Minister Hun Manet.
His death was the first in an unnecessary conflict that had its roots in organized crime and spiraled out of control due to poor diplomacy and shoddy politics on both sides. More than a million people would be displaced and many more soldiers would die.
Of course, all the names of those who died in combat deserve to be inscribed on the Win-Win Monument, and Phnom Penh authorities could follow the example set by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC.
It was here that designer Maya Lin, then an architecture student, broke with tradition and listed all the names of fallen American soldiers in chronological order rather than alphabetical order. In doing so, their deaths marked the beginning and end of the Vietnam War.
This memorial represents symbolism at its best and resonates powerfully with visitors and veterans alike. It’s an idea that wouldn’t go out of place in Phnom Penh.
But this poses problems. Cambodia has still not published a complete death toll from the conflict, which ended with the signing of a truce on December 27 and since then, the ceasefire has struggled to hold.
At least three shooting incidents were reported recently, on April 19, May 14 and 22, with the two sides predictably trading blame as the Thai navy conducted exercises near Cambodia’s maritime border after Bangkok ended an agreement used to manage overlapping claims.
But above all, Cambodia still seems unable to get rid of organized crime, its networks of scams and human trafficking, a key element to guarantee the ceasefire and a requirement insisted on by both Beijing and Bangkok.
The deadline it set for itself, at the end of April, to put an end to the scourge of scams has long passed. In the first three weeks of May, Cambodian police say they arrested 3,320 suspected fraudsters from 32 countries after raids on 50 locations across the country.
Evidence also points to a rapid expansion of these networks into a “sustainable regional criminal economy,” a U.S. special committee said in a report released in Washington last week, adding that this poses a direct threat to Americans, U.S. allies and U.S. security.
The report effectively states that the fraudulent compounds originated in a Chinese state-owned company and details how they spread to Myanmar, now a “failed state,” and are now taking root in Central Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
But it describes Cambodia as a “stable state criminal ecosystem” in which more than 150,000 people were trafficked into compounds and forced to adopt the “pig butchery model” to target victims primarily in the United States, Europe and East Asia.
“Cambodia’s role cannot be understood simply as that of organized crime thriving in a weak state. Rather, it reflects a politically consolidated system rooted in patronage, capable of absorbing and stabilizing large-scale illicit capital and efficiently transferring that capital to its ruling coalition,” he said.
“In this environment, gated fraud complexes – characterized by controlled access, private security, debt bondage, and violence against trafficked workers – have operated across the country with enduring local tolerance, even amid periodic, high-profile crackdowns. »
It was these realities that fueled and helped shape a war that did not need to happen but will undoubtedly be written into Cambodian history as Sgt. Suon Roan is remembered on May 28.