Thailand and the Viet Minh League (01)

Thailand and the Viet Minh League (01)

Anti-French feeling and the unresolved problem of the disputes territories with the French were the main reasons for Thailand’s alliance with the Vietnamese, its bitter enemy in the pre-colonial era.

Thai decision-makers actively encouraged dissident Vietnamese elements in Thailand, and hoped for a Viet Minh victory in Indo-China, since they considered that this would make the disputed territories fall into their lap.

Both Thais and Vietnamese tried to forget the past and started a new era of friendship with the common objective of destroying French domination in Indo-China.

The Thais allowed the Vietnamese to use Thai territory as a base for their political and military activities against the French. In Battambang in particular the original Vietnamese population consisted for the most part of fishermen on the Great Lake. They were heavily reinforced by two distinct types of dissident Vietnamese from French Indo-China proper.

First there were political refugees and outlaws from Cochin-China (Southern Vietnam), some of course wanted by the French. Many of them belonged to the Viet Minh and a number of them came under Communist influence and had reason to fear and dislike the French.

Secondly, there were Vietnamese from Cambodia, who, after the removal of former Cambodian Prime Minister Son Ngoc Thanh by the Allies, were relieved of their administrative posts.

This second category worked with the Khmer Issaraks in the hope that they could get their jobs back in an independent Cambodia. Here it is as well to point out that, although the Cambodians were on the whole afraid of the Vietnamese, there were many highly-placed Vietnamese in the pre-October 1945 Cambodian Government. Of the two Vietnamese elements the first was by far the most active and most dangerous to the French.