Foreign Digest: Cambodia, Haiti, Falkland Islands, Iran and Syria

     I commend Cambodia for convicting and sentencing to life imprisonment the chief jailer of the Khmer Rhouge for his atrocities when that regime held power in the 1970s. His crimes against humanity included the torture and murder of hundreds of thousands, including political dissidents and innocent people, who were among the many killed by the Cambodian Communist dictatorship.

     I commend Haiti’s decision to put former dictator Jean Claude Duvalier on trial. I had praised Haiti for arresting him upon his return in my post in last February, Foreign Digest: Haiti, Portugal, European Union http://williamcinfici.blogspot.com/2011/02/foreign-digest-haiti-portugal-european.html.

     I urge Argentina’s left-wing government to tone down its imperialist rhetoric in regard to the Falkland Islands. The rhetoric between Argentina and the United Kingdom has heated up as the thirtieth anniversary of the Falklands War approaches. The British colony, inhabited only by loyal Britons, was invaded by Argentina’s military dictatorship in 1982, but the British took back the islands and maintain a force there to defend it. The formidable British Royal Navy is sending its most lethal ship to the Falklands. 

     I am pleased that more international sanctions are being placed on Iran by the United States, Europe and others, but disappointed in Russia and China for vetoing a United Nations Security Council Resolution calling for Bashar Assad, the dictator of Iran’s ally, Syria, to resign. Syria has been cracking down on dissent in the indiscriminately violent style of the late Libyan dictator, Muammar Qaddafi, who was killed last year by Libyan rebels backed by NATO. The U.S. is leading the just effort to put international pressure on Syria to relent on its crackdown and allow the self-determination of the Syrian people. Assad is following the policies of his father, the previous dictator, who killed tens of thousands of people in 1982 by shelling Homs with tank artillery when the citizens of that city, among others, rebelled against his tyranny.