NEW YORK: While attending the UN General Assembly in New York, Prime Minister Hun Manet managed to meet with US Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who congratulated the new PM on his nomination and let him know that the two-month pause on assistance was over following the US objection to the elections that put him in power.
On September 22, the two met on the sidelines of the UNGA where, according to a press release from Cambodia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the PM was warmly welcomed and offered an opportunity to enhance cooperation between the two countries. This comes just two months after the US condemned the elections that put the new PM in his position.
On July 23, the US State Department said it had “taken steps to impose visa restrictions on individuals who undermined democracy and implemented a pause of certain foreign assistance programs.” According to the press release, Nuland said that the United States had decided to resume $18 million in assistance through USAID that had been paused following the election which the country had officially called “neither free nor fair.”
A main concern of the US Secretary of State was speeding up procedures for deporting Cambodians from the US. As of March, there were 1,801 Cambodians with final orders of removal on the national docket for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Nuland asked that the Cambodian side be quicker in procedures to receive deportees.
More than 195,000 Cambodian refugees resettled in the US between 1975 and 1999 to escape the violence of the Khmer Rouge and many Cambodians are being deported back to a country they either left very young, or have never been to. At the ASEAN Summit in November, former Prime Minister Hun Sen asked the US to reconsider its policies on humanitarian grounds.
“Some of the deportees committed suicide and some have died of other causes,” he said, speaking to US President Biden. “Their families – parents, spouses and children – are all in the US.”
Prime Minister Hun Manet told Nuland that “relevant Cambodian ministries and agencies would streamline the procedures, making them more smooth, fast, and effective.” He did ask that Cambodians with health issues be taken care of, to which Nuland responded that they were and that the US would do more to meet his request.
