Between 1965 and 1973, US planes dropped millions of tons of bombs on Cambodia, killing 65,000 people and displacing hundreds of thousands. Tragically, the killing fields resulted in millions more casualties.

Under duress from both sides - the Khmer Rouge onslaught and the North Vietnamese army encroachment - the Cambodian government borrowed money from the US in the amount of $278 million in order to survive. Today that amount has ballooned to $700 million with interest. 

This debt is unjust and should be written off.  On one hand the US bombed Cambodia - displacing hundreds of thousands of farmers - on the other hand it lent money to Cambodia to buy food from the US, solving the very problem it had partly caused. 

The US has a history of forgiving debt to the poorest countries. In 2000, President Clinton signed a foreign aid bill that forgave the $435 million debt of Bolivia, one of the poorest countries in Latin America. “By lifting the weakest, poorest among us, we lift the rest of us as well,” Mr. Clinton said. Twenty-two other nations received debt relief during President Clinton’s tenure. Cambodia is still one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia. It is only appropriate that the US forgive Cambodia's debt as well.

We should turn a new chapter in US-Cambodia relationships by getting rid of this debt. Cambodians do not much representation in congress, which is why this issue has not been resolved. Hopefully this petition will get the US Congress & President to see the injustice of this debt and to include Cambodia's debt forgiveness in the next foreign aid bill.