20 Riels 700th Anniversary of Swiss Unity

The 700th anniversary being commemorated here is the 1291 Federal Charter — the founding document of the Swiss Confederation, signed by the three forest cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden. That Cambodia's socialist government issued this piece in 1988 reflects the realities of the commemorative coin trade rather than any diplomatic alignment: the People's Republic of Kampuchea, still under Vietnamese-backed administration and excluded from most international bodies, used foreign-themed issues primarily to generate hard currency through numismatic distributors in Europe.