Free Republic

President Joe Biden committed the first gaffe of his trip to Asia Saturday within the first seconds of his opening remarks, when he mistakenly referred to his Cambodian host as the head of Colombia. Biden spoke seconds after Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has ruled the country for 37 years and is using the ASEAN summit as a showcase for his nation. 'I want to thank the prime minister of Colombia for his leadership as ASEAN chair,' Biden said at the top of his remarks, stumbling over the word and moving on without correcting it.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen called on the United States on Friday to withdraw Peace Corps volunteers in an escalating row over accusations that U.S. agents conspired with an opposition leader to plot treason. Hun Sen was responding after the U.S. embassy in Phnom Penh issued a travel warning that urged citizens to show caution amid "anti-American rhetoric by officials". "Are you scaring Cambodians?" Hun Sen said of the United States in an address to garment workers at factories which export much of their production to the United States. "Are you prepared to invade Cambodia and that's why you told...

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, March 26 (UPI) -- Michelle Obama's tour of Asia to promote girls' education was marked by blunt criticism from Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who said the first lady was "playing around" and using hopeful rhetoric about making improvements but not guaranteeing aid. The Phnom Penh Post reported that Hun Sen told U.S. embassy personnel and USAID workers Wednesday that Obama's Saturday visit with 10 schoolgirls in the Cambodian city of Siem Reap, part of the White House's "Let Girls Learn" initiative, was good but not enough. He said the U.S. government should promise scholarships – if...

While the radical Islamists held a scimitar to the throat of freedom of expression over cartoons, Hun Sen, Cambodia’s dictator, was throttling those who dared speak out against his misdeeds and Vietnam’s grab of a good portion of Cambodia’s border. Prime Minister Hun Sen is the epitome of the old adage that a tiger never changes his stripes. First by a coup d’état in 1997 in which over 100 members of the Royalist Party democrats were murdered, then through rigged elections, and now through his kangaroo courts, Hun Sen has managed to intimidate and silence all opposition to his fascist...

October 31, 2004, 12:42 p.m. John Kerry's Other Vietnam WarWhy would we trust this man to be our president? By Stephen Morris John Kerry has fought this election campaign as a political moderate. Certainly his main foreign-policy advisers are moderate Democrats. But that campaign posture disguises his 34-year record in public life — which produced no legislative achievement, but featured a well-documented obsession with Vietnam and Cambodia that continues to the present day. Kerry made his four and a half months of service in Vietnam an electoral issue, but it's his 34 years of political activism on Vietnam and...

Cambodian labor leader Chea Vichea fatally shot in Phnom Penh PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) - A prominent Cambodian labor leader affiliated with the country's main opposition party was fatally shot Thursday on a street in Phnom Penh, in the latest in a series of suspected political killings. Chea Vichea, president of the Cambodian Free Trade Union of Workers, was shot at least twice in the chest at close range while reading at a roadside newsstand, said the owner of the newsstand, Va Sothy. "There were two assailants,'' Va Sothy said. "One was waiting on a motorcycle and the other walked...

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - By leading his party to another election victory, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has cemented his reputation as one of the region's canniest politicians - with a ruthless streak when the need arises. Some may say that Hun Sen - the son of peasants, a former communist guerrilla and an avid chess player - is on his way to attaining the status of statesman, though he's always relished being called Cambodia's "strongman." Whether by the ballot or the bullet, Hun Sen has been the master of his country's politics since 1985 when he became the world's...