Cambodia Rejects US War Debt, Slams US
Imperial Brutality
By
teleSUR / uj-CM
March 21, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- "teleSUR"
-Cambodian Prime Minister Hun
Sen, who has been calling for the
cancellation of the debt since President
Donald Trump was elected, rejected
paying it, saying, "I have not sent an
official letter to Trump asking him to
cancel the debt … They brought bombs and
dropped them on Cambodia and (now)
demand Cambodian people to pay.”
Speaking at a conference earlier this
month, Sen, a former commander with
Cambodian communists,
slammed recent comments
made by U.S.
Ambassador to Cambodia William Heidt
about repayment, and recalled the
atrocities committed by the United
States in the 1970s.
“They dropped bombs on our heads and
then ask up to repay. When we do not
repay, they tell the IMF (International
Monetary Fund) not to lend us money,"
Sen said. "We should raise our voices to
talk about the issue of the country that
has invaded other (countries) and has
killed children."
In the late 1960s, the United States
gave Cambodia a US$274 million loan,
mostly for food supplies to the
U.S.-backed Lon Nol government who
had taken over the country in a coup a
year earlier. The debt has almost
doubled since then, as Cambodia has
refused to enter into a repayment
program.
As Nol fought against the Khmer Rouge
between 1970 and 1975, U.S. fighter jets
carried out
secret carpet-bombings against the
group in support of the right-wing
government, killing more than 500,000
people, many of them women and children.
After
the Khmer Rouge took over the
country in 1975, more than 2 million
people died as a result of political
executions, disease and forced labor,
and many credited U.S. imperialism in
the region for fueling the death toll.
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During his tenure as prime minister
since 1998, Sen has called for the
United States to drop the "dirty debt"
several times, but U.S. leaders have
refused.
