Information Minister: 'A Ceasefire Is Not a Title Deed to Territory'

Information Minister Neth Pheaktra argued that the December 27, 2025 ceasefire freezes military positions but confers no territorial rights, saying 'freezing troop positions is not the same as freezing sovereignty. Troop positions are not international boundaries. Factual control is not legal title.' He said Thailand cannot isolate paragraph 2 of the Joint Statement (maintaining troop positions) from paragraphs 3, 4 and 6, which bar creating new facts on the ground or obstructing civilian returns, noting roughly 20,000 displaced Cambodian civilians still cannot go home. Any barbed wire, trenches, fortifications or roads built since the ceasefire, he said, amount to unlawful consolidation rather than mere position maintenance: 'A ceasefire is not a title deed to territory.'