Anti-Vietnam rally does not affect the relations between Cambodia and Vienam

PHNOM PENH (The Cambodia Herald) -- Anti-Vietnam protest in front of the Vietnamese embassy didn't affect relations between Cambodia and Vietnam, said a spokesman on Wednesday.

Koy Kuong, spokesman for Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, made such comments after Federation of Cambodian Intellectuals and Students held a protest Tuesday to demand the spokesman recognize Kampuchea Krom history.

"It didn't affect the Cambodian-Vietnamese relations," he said, referring to the anti-Vietnam protest staged by about two hundreds of students, monks and Khmer Kampuchea Krom.

Vietnam on Tuesday strongly condemned Khmer Kampuchea Krom citizens for holding anti-Vietnam rally.

"Vietnam vehemently condemns any fabrication, distortion, slander, legally-groundless opposition by any organization or individual against the unity and territorial integrity of Vietnam, " the Vietnamese Embassy in Phnom Penh said in its statement.

The Vietnamese embassy spokesman told local media last month that France didn't cut Kampuchea Krom land, and gave it to Vietnam, but the land [in southern part of Vietnam] had been part of Vietnamese territory for a long time ago even before French colony.

The Federation of Cambodian Intellectuals and Students announced Wednesday that it would stage anti-Vietnam rally again next week.

"We only want the Vietnamese government and embassy spokesman to acknowledge the true history that Cambodia lost Kampuchea Krom after France detached the land to Vietnam in 1949," the federation president Mao Pises said at a news conference.