Word: plight
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Mexican government announced that as a precaution, it had temporarily closed its Tehran embassy and that the Shah was welcome to return to his exile in Cuernavaca. It had been presumed for days that having the Shah leave the U.S. would be a useful first step in resolving the plight of the hostages. But typical of the unpredictability of events was an announcement by the students in the embassy late in the week, that the flight of the Shah to any third country could result in "harsher decisions being taken against the hostages...
...frustration about the plight of the hostages increased, there was a sense that the Administration should do something ?anything?to free them. The White House, for sound tactical and strategic reasons, rejected the military options (see box). There were demands for the mass deportation of the 50,000 Iranian students in the U.S.?or at least those who had taken advantage of their visas to picket and demonstrate against the U.S. That was also rejected, since it would blatantly violate U.S. immigration laws...
...Western Europe, the plight of the Cambodians also sparked wide-scale efforts. For the French, who had ruled Cambodia for 90 years, until 1953, compassion ran high for their former colonial subjects. This week's U.N. conference is the result of an initiative by French Foreign Minister Jean François-Poncet. His earlier appeal for more aid to Cambodia spurred a nationwide "S O S Cambodia" campaign that has raised $2 million from French citizens. Three French medical teams are working in refugee camps in Thailand, while the hospital ship lie de la Lumière, which is now headed...
Systematic pillaging by Vietnamese troops has compounded the country's plight. Cambodian shops, homes and Buddhist temples have been stripped by Hanoi's invaders. Machines, household appliances, furniture and Buddha heads have been loaded aboard planes and trucks and shipped to Viet Nam. There are even reports that the Vietnamese are loading rice intended for refugees aboard carriers headed for Hanoi...
Hanoi's disregard of the plight of the Cambodians has been reinforced by the enmity between the two peoples. The Vietnamese have long regarded the Cambodians as treacherous barbarians who had the impudence to revolt against their domination in 1840. Observed Minh Mang, the Vietnamese emperor at the time: "We helped the Cambodians when they were suffering and lifted them out of the mud. Now they are rebellious. I am so angry that my hair stands upright. Hundreds of knives should be used against them, to chop them up, to dismember them...