TRUMP CRITICIZES 'DUMB' AUSTRALIA REFUGEE DEAL →

Australia’s efforts to move detained refugees off Nauru and Manus island hit another snag yesterday with reports of US President Donald Trump’s reticence to accept a deal that would see many of the asylum seekers go to America.
 
Officials from both countries claimed the phone call between Mr. Trump and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Saturday went well and reaffirmed both leaders’ commitments to preserving the longstanding relationship between both nations.
 
“The deal specifically deals with 1,250 people, they’re mostly in Papua New Guinea, being held…there will be extreme vetting applied to all of them as part and parcel of the deal that was made,” government spokesman Sean Spicer told the White House press corps earlier this week.
 
“The president, in accordance with that deal to honor what had been agreed upon by the United States government…will go forward.”
 
But yesterday, the Washington Post reported that the call was far from cordial, with Mr. Trump severely criticizing the refugee deal and criticizing Mr. Turnbull.
 
“Do you believe it? The Obama administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter yesterday morning.
 
He had much harsher words for Mr. Turnbull during their call, reportedly telling the Australian prime minister that he “didn’t want these people” and that it was the “worst deal ever.” He slammed Australia for what he said was its attempt to send the “next Boston bombers” to the US, referencing the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 that killed three people and injured hundreds.
 
Mr. Turnbull told the Australian press after the call that Mr. Trump had agreed to honor the deal, which was set up by the Obama administration late last year before he left office and would see up to 1,250 refugees moved to the US.
 
But the Washington Post quoted several senior US officials who said it was a “hostile and charged” conversation that ended abruptly after 25 minutes.  
 
Mr. Turnbull allegedly attempted to change the topic of conversation to military efforts in Syria, but Mr. Trump hung up on him. All of Mr. Trump’s calls with other foreign leaders that day had lasted one hour or more. He reportedly told Mr. Turnbull that it was the “worst call by far.”
 
Reports of the call are contrary to Mr. Trump’s previous actions, which included sending US officials to interview refugees on Nauru and Manus island. Mr. Trump even added a clause to his controversial ban on any immigrants from seven Muslim-majority nations, making an exception for “pre-existing” international agreements in reference to the deal with Australia.
 
However, Mr. Trump allegedly left room for the US to back out of the deal, with senior officials saying he told the Australian leader that it was his “intention” to abide by the deal, a term they said was specifically used to give him leeway.
 
Australia has spent years attempting to offload the refugees being held on the Pacific island nation of Nauru and Manus island in Papua New Guinea and there have been persistent reports of deplorable living conditions, sexual violence and lackluster healthcare at the camps.
 
Almost 1,900 refugees are being held on Nauru and Manus island, with many of them coming from Iran, Iraq, Somalia and Sudan – all countries mentioned in Mr. Trump’s executive order.
 
Australia struck a deal with Cambodia in 2014 to take some of the refugees, but many refused to come. Those who did take up the offer reported poor conditions and widespread mismanagement of the resources they were promised.
 
All but one of the handful of refugees who came to Cambodia returned to the countries they fled and Cambodian immigration officials have refused to comment on reports of three Iranian refugees allegedly slated to come to the kingdom this year.
 
The refugees held on Nauru and Manus island are now stuck in limbo, waiting to see what Mr. Trump will do or say next. Despite the president’s criticism of the deal and tough talk to the Australian prime minister, a US embassy spokesman in Australia told the Guardian that “President Trump’s decision to honor the refugee agreement has not changed.”

This article was printed in Khmer Times on February 3, 2017: https://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/35073/trump-criticizes--dumb--australian-refugee-deal/

TRUMP BACKS DEAL WITH AUSTRALIA →

US President Donald Trump assured Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull that a deal signed by his predecessor – which would allow the asylum seekers held on Manus and Nauru to settle in the US – would be honored during the first official call between the two leaders yesterday morning.

The two discussed a variety of issues during their 25-minute phone conversation, but Mr. Trump sought to allay fears that the refugee deal would be scrapped after months of uncertainty.

Australia has been detaining more than 2,000 refugees on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea and on the island nation of Nauru and sent a handful of refugees from Nauru to Cambodia in a much-maligned 2014 deal that largely fell apart when all but one decided to return to their home countries.

The refugees who came to Cambodia under the $30 million deal alleged bad  living conditions, little assistance from the government and lies told to them before their arrival about the kingdom and what compensation they would receive.

Despite reports in October of three more refugees were slated to come to Cambodia under the deal, Kem Sarin, a spokesman for the general immigration department, declined to comment on the future of Cambodia’s pact with Australia in light of the US government’s stance.

Tan Sovichea, the refugee department director, did not respond to requests for comment.

Chak Sopheap, the executive director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, said the deal was doomed from the start considering Cambodia’s track record with its own refugees.

“While the neglect suffered by those refugees under the deal in Cambodia may pale in comparison to the reports of abuse coming from Nauru, the fact remains that many of the refugees have opted to return to the countries from which they fled, suggesting strongly the extent of the neglect they were subject to here,” she said.

In November, then-US President Barack Obama agreed to bring all of the refugees on both islands to the US pending extensive background checks and interviews. Due to Mr. Trump’s outspoken stance against immigration during his election campaign, many believed the deal would be scrapped once he took office.

But officials from the US State Department have already gone to both Nauru and Manus to interview refugees ahead of their resettlement on orders from Mr. Trump’s administration.

Mr. Trump’s backing of the agreement came as a surprise to many analysts and commentators in the US considering his recent executive order suspending the entry of all refugees to the US for 120 days, banning Syrian refugees indefinitely and stopping the citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the US for 90 days.

Many of those being held on Nauru and Manus are from the seven nations on Mr. Trump’s list of now-banned countries, including Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Thousands of protesters crowded American airports in defiance of the order on Saturday after people from those seven countries who had obtained all of the documents and approvals needed to visit or live in the US legally were arrested and held by customs agents in countries across the world.

A court order late on Saturday night temporarily stopped the US government from enforcing the order after a lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Legal experts in the US have criticized the measure, as it runs afoul of a number of long-standing US laws. It is in direct violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which made it illegal to discriminate against immigrants on the basis of national origin.

The law was passed in an effort to remedy a series of race-based government edicts enforced in the early 1900s, the most notable of which – the Asiatic Barred Zone Act of 1917 – was aimed primarily at banning immigrants from Southeast Asia, China and Japan from entering the US and becoming citizens.

*This article as featured in Khmer Times on January 30, 2017: https://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/34868/trump-backs-deal-with-australia/

HUN SEN BACKS TRUMP

BY JONATHAN GREIG AND TAING VIDA

US presidential nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are now on barnstorming tours across the country, making their final appeals to swing voters ahead of next Tuesday’s election.
 

Democratic candidate Ms. Clinton has received an overwhelming number of endorsements from a variety of places, including French President Francois Hollande and a bevy of newspapers, as well as several dozen from senior Republican party members.
 

Yet Republican candidate Mr. Trump will be glad to know there is one extra person supporting his candidacy: Prime Minister Hun Sen.
 

During a speech at the Royal Police Academy yesterday, Mr. Hun Sen told the crowd that he believed the brash billionaire would be better for the world than Ms. Clinton.
 

He said geopolitical trends showed that the world was headed towards another Cold War and one of the reasons for this shift was the US election.
 

It was unusual, he said to the crowd, for the US to have two candidates who were so starkly different.
 

“To be honest, I want Mr. Trump to win so badly,” he said. “If he wins, the world situation will see changes and get even better because Trump is a businessman, and as a businessman, he doesn’t want any war.”
 

The premier went on to say that if Ms. Clinton were to be the next president of the US, the world would “face war” because when she was secretary of state under current president Barack Obama, she advised the president to attack and invade Syria.
 

“If Ms. Clinton wins the US election, relations between the US and China could be difficult. And relations between the US and Russia could be hard to predict,” he said.
 

“However, if Mr. Trump wins the election, I think he could become friends with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.”
 

Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin often compare themselves to one another and Mr. Trump has expressed admiration for the Russian premier’s brand of “leadership.” Many of Mr. Trump’s senior campaign figures have business ties to Russia and a number of former Soviet states.
 

Sadly for Mr. Hun Sen, his beliefs about Mr. Trump’s potential dealings with China do not line up with the candidate’s own comments about the Asian powerhouse.
 

The Republican has repeatedly threatened to start a trade war with China unless they adopt more US-favorable terms in a variety of trade deals. In a March interview with The New York Times, he would not rule out starting a war with China.
 

He has also threatened to go to war with Iran, Mexico, North Korea and a number of other countries if he became president.
 

But Mr. Hun Sen later turned his attention to the effect the election would have on Cambodia, telling the crowd that he was more worried about Ms. Clinton because of her history in supporting US military intervention in foreign conflicts. “He says the truth, unlike Ms. Clinton. Her point of view affects us,” he said.
 

On the other hand, the opposition said the party did not favor either candidate and believed that both Ms. Clinton and Mr. Trump could have an effect on ties between the US and Cambodia.
 

“We all know that the United States is a democratic country where people have total freedom to access information and to speak out,” said Cambodia National Rescue Party spokesperson Yim Sovann.
 

“Our party respects the American voters so we are rooting for no one. We believe both of the candidates will maintain a relationship with Cambodia and other countries.”
 

Yet political analysts in Cambodia have said there is a very decisive difference between the two candidates and worry about Mr. Trump’s lack of a definitive position on Asia outside of trade deals withChina.
 

The unpredictability of his campaign, his own views and his subsequent actions have made it hard to discern how he would approach a country like Cambodia, said Ou Virak, a political analyst and president of the Future Forum.
 

“Hillary wants stronger interna ional relations and will follow some of Obama’s policies,” he said. “I think the relationship between America and Cambodia, including other countries, would not be much different with her, while Trump might change a lot because he is unpredictable.
 

“I expect no change from Ms. Clinton. But for Trump, I believe there would be some changes that concern the international community.
 

“He seems unclear on what he is doing. He talks about Russia but has no clear policies and he may harm the world.”

http://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/31678/hun-sen-plays-his-trump-card/