March & April 2002 Montagnard International Press News

'Yard Net Breaking News Reports
(We're Not Making The News Here, Folks, Just Reporting It... Apr 2002)

April Menu


Cambodia News - Apr 19

Montagnards' Tell Of Flight



Cambodia News - Apr 18

Montagnards' Journey To Freedom Progessing


Cambodia News - Apr 17
Final Montagnards Leave UNHCR Camps

NY Times - Apr 18

World Briefing: Asia

Kyodo News - Apr 17

UNHCR Concerned Over Ransacking Of Refugee Camp In Cambodia

Associated Press - Apr 16

U.N. Refugee Agency Criticizes Cambodia For Montagnard Camp Looting

Cambodia News - Apr 15

UNHCR Refugee Camp Looted & Razed
Associated Press - Apr 15

One UN Camp Vacated As Asylum Seekers Make Way To Phnom Penh

Hanoi - AFP - Apr 10

Vietnam To Send More Immigrants To Restive Central Highlands

Rueters - Apr 15

Vietnam Tightens Securtiy In Restive Province

Cambodia Daily - Apr 15

Montagnard Transport To Phnom Penh Begins
European Parliament Resolutuin - Apr 11

Resolution Regarding Ethnic Minorities In Vietnam
Rueters - April 13

Resettlement Of Montagnards To Begin
Agence France-Presse - April 13

US Airlift Of Montagnards Begins
Associated Press - Apr 13

Montagnards Begin Long Trek To The United States
Cambodia Daily - Apr 11

VN Offers Cash For Return Of Montagnard Asylum Seekers
Deutsche Presse-Agentur - Jan 22

U.N. Vietnam Agree To Repatriation For Asylum Seekers In Cambodia
Kyodo News Service Japan - Jan 22

Vietnam Accepts U.N. Monitoring Of Returnees
Agence France Presse - Jan 21

Vietnamese Refugees In Cambodia To Be 'Voluntarily' Repatriated
Xinhua Phnom Penh - Jan 21

Report of Second Tripartite Meeting on Vietnamese "Montagnards" in Cambodia Signed

AP International - Jan 21

GVN Sentences Four Montagnards For Aiding Escapes To Cambodia

The Cambodia Daily - Jan 15

Officials Set Date For Montagnard Discussions



The Cambodia Daily Friday, April 19, 2002: Page 1

Montagnards Tell Of Flight By Matt KcKinney The Cambodia Daily

Twelve nights of running through the jungle brought one Montagnard to the Cambodian border and freedom last year. But now he lays awake at night thinking of his wife and seven children, still living in his Vietnamese village under the eyes of menacing authorities.

"I cannot eat. I have a headache all day. I think about my family," said the man, one of about 900 Montagnards staying at an abandoned garment factory near Old Stadium in Phnom Penh while awaiting resettlement to the US.

The man fidgets as he speaks, rubbing his left arm near a tattoo. His eyes are shaded by a camouflage baseball cap with "USA" and a Nike logo on it. He says he is 46 and a former soldier. He does not give his name.

Like many of his fellow Montagnards, he left his family behind when he fled Vietnam after a government push to crush ethnic dissension in the Central Highlands.

After nearly a year in UN camps in Mondolkiri and Ratanakkiri provinces, the Montagnards were moved in recent days to Phnom Penh. But the governments of Cambodia and Vietnam have vowed to seal the border so no more Montagnards can flee.

The former soldier spoke to a reporter as he waited for an X-ray at the National Tuberculosis Hospital. He said he remembers meeting US soldiers in 1973, when he was a 16-year-old soldier battling the North Vietnamese.

"I worked as a militia guard in our village," he said. " I remember when I met them. They said nothing to us because we could not speak English. But they were smiling."

He said the US soldiers made no promises of future resettlement to the US in exchange for fighting with them.

He left his village last year with a group of 47 men. They ran at night. Sitting next to him Thursday at the hospital was Nie Y'Cut, who said he fled Vietnam last Aug 17 with a group of 16 men.

"We were very afraid," he said. They worried that land mines were hidden in the paths that snaked through the jungle, and when the Vietnamese police closed in they could hear the police dogs barking behind them.

The soldier speaks up again.

He says he is excited to go the US, but that it is his second choice.

"We want the UN to liberate the Montagnards," he said. "We want the UN to help us in our own home."

The Montagnards oppose Vietnam's land policies, which the Montagnards say allow incoming Vietnamese settlers to take over the Montagnards' ancestral lands.

"I am afraid of the Vietnamese who want our farmland," said Nie Y'Cut. He said he will go to the US, but as soon as Vietnam offers the Montagnards their ancestral lands back, he will return.

A UN official said Thursday that bureaucratic paperwork is about all that remains before the first of the Montagnards begin moving to the US.

There are some families among the group, and they will begin to fly out in about three weeks, the UN official said. He estimated that it would take two months to process all the Montagnards.

The Montagnards' fear of Vietnamese authorities taking them back has begun to melt as they spend more time in Phnom Penh under the protection of international officials. Still, the refugees speak in halting sentences, and as they respond to questions they often hesitate and look at their friends before continuing.

One man, who looked to be 50 years old but claimed to be 30, said he was too young to remember when US soldiers asked his fellow Montagnards to help them fight the North Vietnamese.

His wife and four children are still in Gia Lai, in the Central Highlands, he says. He does not want his name printed for fear that Vietnamese authorities will harass them.

He faces a tough life ahead in the US, where he has no family or relatives and does not know the language. He will use everything he learned as a farmer to try to survive in his new home, which will likely be the state of North Carolina, which has the largest Montagnard population in the US.

"It will depend on our own abilities," he said. "We cannot estimate what will happen with our destinies."

[end]

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The Cambodia Daily Thursday, April 18, 2002

Page 1

Montagnards Journey To Freedom Progressing

By Seth Meixner The Cambodia Daily

TBONG KHMUM DISTRICT, Kompong Cham province -

During the day long truck ride Monday out of Mondolkiri province, most of the Montagnard refugees in a UN convoy watched happily as the Cambodian countryside rolled by.

Some even broke loose from the quiet awe that had gripped the group and threw water on passing Cambodian New Years revelers.

Behind them was a UN refugee camp that had been home to more than 500 of them for more than a year, ever since they fled what they claimed was the Vietnamese government's stranglehold on their life in the Central Highlands.

Most of those who ran into the forests of eastern Cambodia, braving manhunts and the threat of being sent back to, at best, a closely scrutinized existence, in Vietnam, had said they wanted to go to the US.

But as he began the first step of that long journey Monday, one refugee who emerged over the months as one of the Montagnards' de facto camp leaders said reality had begun to settle over many of those in the convoy heading toward a refugee processing center in Phnom Penh.

"America is good for us," said Bion, a softly-spoken man in his early thirties who had spent months asking any camp visitor he met one question: Do you know what will happen to us?

"But we worry that if we go to America, people will forget what happened in the Central Highlands," he added.

More than 1,000 Montagnards living for the past year under UN protection in either Mondolkiri or Ratanakkiri province brought into sharp focus what they continue to describe as a 'tense" situation in their homeland.

It's worse than before," Bion said. "We have no freedom to move. [The authorities] control our land and human rights [conditions] are worse."

Unconfirmed reports have filtered into Cambodia of mass failings, public beatings, torture and disappearances of politically active Montagnards.

Observers say a more likely reality is the disappearance of a hill tribe culture whose Christian religion is being attacked and whose land is being taken by the Hanoi government, which is trying to relieve desperate overcrowding in the lowlands by moving as many as 10,000 Vietnamese a year into an area that once belonged exclusively to the Montagnards.

"These people had reasons for leaving in all aspects of [their] lives,"
said one official with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees who interviewed Montagnards when they first fled to Cambodia.

"They are being deprived of a nation, of a means of living, of an identity. They are taking this risk so that in the long run they can be masters of their own house."

But that long run may never come for this group of refugees. With their resettlement to the US, the Cambodian government has declared the refugee crisis over. Future asylum seekers will be returned, and officials allowed the burning of the Mondolkiri refugee camp an hour after the refugees left.

Despite warnings from human rights groups that Montagnard refugees will be filtering into Cambodia for a long time to come, even the Montagnards' staunchest diplomatic allies have quietly dropped the question of whether Cambodia is obligated to keep its doors open to future asylum seekers.

"That [silence] was part of the deal," one observer said of the negotiations that preceded Prime Minister Hun Sen's decision to allow to Montagnards under the UN's care to go to the US.

That deal making is not lost on Bion, who sees his situation as a step forward for his family, but perhaps a step backward in the larger fight for a hill tribe homeland that is independent of Hanoi.

`The first thing I want to do is study and better my situation," he said. "I want to send my daughter to school but I hope she will be useful for helping our nation ....[But] in the future we don't have a better life because my nation. my homeland is lost."

[end]

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The Cambodia Daily Wednesday, April 17, 2002

Final Montagnards Leave UNHCR Camps

By David Kihara The Cambodia Daily

The last batch of Montagnard asylum seekers was airlifted from Ratanakkiri province to Phnom Penh Tuesday morning, marking the successful completion of the operation to transport over 900 refugees from Ratanakkiri and Mondolkiri provinces to the capital.

The Montagnards, who began fleeing Vietnam 15 months ago because of alleged government persecution, are now staying at an unused garment factory in Phnom Penh. They are waiting for US Immigration and Naturalization officials to determine their refugee status and eligibility to be resettled in the US, a US Embassy official said.

An official from the Ministry of Interior Tuesday confirmed the asylum seekers from both UN refugee camps reached Phnom Penh safely, and that authorities have now closed both UN camps.

The Interior Ministry official, who declined to be identified, confirmed earlier reports that Mondolkiri provincial authorities burned down the UN camp in that province on Monday just one hour after the refugees left.

"The authorities burned down the camp because if they didn't, people might move back to the camp and a fire could have been started," the official said Tuesday.

Nikola Mihajlovic, the head of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees office, could not be reached for comment Tuesday regarding the closing of the UN camps by Cambodian officials.

While it was still unclear Tuesday who ordered the torching of the Mondolkiri camp, the Ministry of Interior did not instruct provincial officials to participate in the burning, the official said "We found out about the fire after it broke out," the official said.

Police will not burn down the Ratanakkiri camp. They will allow villagers in the surrounding area to dismantle the houses and take material home, the official said.

Even though Cambodia is a signatory to the 1951 Convention on Refugees, which states that capturing or deporting asylum seekers before their refugee status is determined is a violation of the treaty, the Interior Ministry official said any future asylum seekers would be turned away at the Vietnamese border.

"If they come, we will send them back," the official said.

A US official said his country hopes the government will consider the 1951 treaty before turning asylum seekers away.

"We recognize how difficult this situation has been for the Cambodian government, but we would like to see the government offer 'first asylum' [to asylum seekers] under the 1951 convention on refugees, of which Cambodia is a signatory;" the US official said Tuesday.

First asylum refers to the first country asylum seekers go to before they are permanently resettled in a third country.

There are several INS agents from the US Embassy in Bangkok now in Phnom Penh working to determine the refugee status of the Montagnards, and more will come soon, the US official said.

No time frame has been given yet for when the refugee checks will be completed and when the Montagnards will be resettled in the US. "[But] we would like the process to move as quickly as possible-no one is dragging their feet," the official said.

The Associated Press reported that 33 senior Vietnamese senior provincial officials were sent Monday to strengthen village governments in four districts in the Central Highlands, the region from which the Montagnards fled The officials "will engage in mobilizing the masses, helping with social and economic development and enhancing security and defense in these villages where governments are weak," a Vietnamese government official said on condition of anonymity.

The officials will stay for two years. They were given $65 each and will receive a $26 monthly allowance in addition to their regular salaries.

The official said 249 provincial and district government officials were assigned to village governments last year for 4 to 5 months following protests by ethnic minority groups.

[end]


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New York Times
Wednesday, April 18, 2002

World Briefing: Asia

VIETNAM: CURSES, GRAVES AND LAND TENURE The ghosts of past superstitions surfaced as two villages battled over disputed farmland in the northern province of Vinh Phuc. Local Communist Party officials were unable to calm the dispute as men from one village, accusing the other of cursing their land, dug up the ancestral graves of their rivals. Land disputes have become more common as Vietnam's population grows and the government loosens its controls on free enterprise.
Seth Mydans (NYT)

CAMBODIA: VIETNAMESE REFUGEES LEAVE CAMPS The United Nations has moved 905 ethnic minority Vietnamese refugees from two camps just inside Cambodia to Phnom Penh, the capital, in preparation for resettlement in the United States. After a year of disputes among Cambodia, Vietnam and the United Nations over their fate, Cambodia agreed last month to allow the resettlements but said it would then close the camps and seal its borders to new asylum seekers. Members of Vietnamese hill tribe minorities, known in the past as Montagnards, have been fleeing violent land disputes and a government crackdown on their unauthorized Protestant Christian groups.
Seth Mydans (NYT)

[end]


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Kyodo News
Tuesday, April 16, 2002

UNHCR Concerned Over Ransacking Of Refugee Camp In Cambodia
GENEVA

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Tuesday expressed concern over destruction and looting of UNHCR property in a refugee camp that until Monday morning had housed Vietnamese Montagnard refugees.

''The camp, including the UNHCR office, was thoroughly looted and burned to the ground as Cambodian police stood by and watched,'' UNHCR spokesperson Kris Janowski told reporters in Geneva.

Janowski said UNHCR staff also saw police loading loot onto a truck.

UNHCR staff, on of whom was threatened by a man brandishing a knife, managed to save some office equipment before looters sacked the premises, he said.

He said a number of Vietnamese officials were also present at the time.

''UNHCR staff recognized at least two Vietnamese who had visited the camp earlier this month with relatives of the Montagnards in an apparent effort to intimidate the Montagnard refugees into going back to Vietnam,'' he said.
The Mondulkiri camp housed several hundred Vietnamese Montagnards who fled Vietnam's Central Highlands one year ago. The group was earlier moved to Phnom Penh in preparation for resettlement in the United States.

Many Montagnards, who are mostly Christian native peoples from Vietnam's central highlands, fought alongside U.S. troops during the Vietnam War, earning the distrust of the Vietnamese government.

They have complained of destruction and closures of churches, bans on public gatherings, restrictions on travel, economic discrimination and lowlander encroachment on their traditional lands.

Vietnam was irked last year when the U.S. accepted 38 asylum-seekers who had crossed into Cambodia claiming persecution at home.

Denying discrimination against the Montagnards, Hanoi had demanded that ''ethnic people who have illegally crossed the border to Cambodia'' be repatriated.

[end]


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Associated Press
Tuesday, April 16, 2002

U.N. Refugee Agency Criticizes Cambodia For Montagnard Camp Looting GENEVA -

The United Nations refugee agency criticized Cambodian officials Tuesday for failing to prevent the destruction of a vacant camp that had housed Vietnamese refugees.

Kris Janowski, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said the agency's Mondulkiri camp had been "thoroughly looted and burned to the ground" by local people while "Cambodian police stood by and watched."

"One UNHCR worker was threatened by a man brandishing a knife and UNHCR staff saw local police loading loot onto a truck" during the incident Monday, Janowski told reporters.

The camp in northeastern Cambodian had been home to several hundred people from Vietnam's Central Highlands. They were transferred to the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh just before the destruction of the camp Monday on their way to resettlement in the United States.

The highlanders, known as Montagnards, began pouring into Cambodia in March 2001 following a crackdown on protests against local authorities.

The tribespeople, who are Christians, accuse Vietnam's communist government of seizing their traditional lands and denying them freedom to practice their religion.

Earlier this month, Vietnamese officials who visited the camp tried to intimidate the refugees into returning to Vietnam, said Janowski.
Several of the same officials were present during the looting Monday, he said.

The asylum seekers were supposed to have been repatriated under UNHCR supervision under a January agreement, but the plan collapsed after Hanoi refused to allow U.N. officials to monitor the situation of people who returned to their homes in the Central Highlands.

The United States then stepped in. Many of the tribespeople fought alongside U.S. troops during the Vietnam War.

[end]


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Tue, 15 Apr 2002 15:16:45 +0700
To: Montagnards VWG
The Cambodia Daily, Tuesday, January 15, 2002; page 12
UN Refugee Camp Looted & Razed
The Cambodia Daily
PHNOM PENH, April 15

Cambodian officials razed and looted a UN refugee camp today as the last of 1,000 asylum seekers were shipped out of Cambodia's remote northeast by the United States, UN sources said.

"As soon as the last convoy left, Cambodian police went into a refugee camp in Mondulkiri. They turned up with suitcases, stole what they wanted and burned the rest," one UN source said.

Inside the camp, made of bamboo huts on stilts with plastic sheeting, a UNHCR office was torched.

"There was one guy running around with a knife threatening Cambodian UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) workers," one source said.

Mondulkiri police chief Reach Samnang said that anything of use in the camp was distributed by police to local residents and that the land was needed for rice cultivation.

He added the site would not be used to house any future refugees.

"After six trucks carrying 33 refugees left the camp some people entered it, and police allowed them to take the bamboo and thatch for use in housing construction elsewhere.

"But the rest which was not reuseable was burnt down," he said.

The US and UN were expected to complete the shift of about 1,000 Vietnamese refugees from Cambodia's remote northeast to Phnom Penh today.

Airlifting of about 330 Motagnards began on Saturday while the remainder were arriving by road, carrying almost nothing, from UN camps set up near the Vietnamese border in Ratanakiri and Mondulkiri provinces.

The US offered asylum to the refugees last month after the UN pulled out of a volunteer repatriation programme with Vietnam and Cambodia, accusing both sides of violating the terms of the accord.

However, the US and UN officials have remained tightlipped on the plight of the refugees while Vietnam has claimed the US offer to resettle the Montagnards was a deliberate attempt to stir up fresh unrest among the hilltribes.

"They're being brought down from Ratanakiri and Mondulkiri provinces," another source said.
He said the refugees would be screened in the capital before being shipped out of Cambodia. ? AFP

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Associated Press,
Monday, April 15, 2002 One U.N. Camp Vacated As Asylum Seekers Make Way To Phnom Penh By Chris Decherd, Associated Press Writer

PHNOM PENH - Officials emptied one of two U.N.-administered camps in northeastern Cambodia of more than 500 asylum seekers who were trucked Monday to a transit center in Phnom Penh for processing ahead of their resettlement in the United States.

The joint operation of the United States, United Nations and Cambodia planned to bring remaining refugees from the camps into Phnom Penh by Tuesday night, U.S. officials said. A total of 905 Vietnamese asylum seekers are headed for the United States.

The migrants have been in Cambodia for more than a year, irritating neighboring Vietnam, which has insisted they were illegal border-crossers and not genuine asylum seekers.

A line of trucks carrying about 530 asylum seekers from the camp in Cambodia's northeastern Mondulkiri province rumbled shortly after nightfall into the transit center, converted from a defunct garment factory on the outskirts of the country's capital, Phnom Penh.

A military plane was expected to carry the last of the asylum seekers to Phnom Penh on Tuesday, said a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

More than two weeks have passed since Cambodia irked Hanoi by agreeing to allow the highlanders to leave for the United States.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen attempted to placate Vietnam by demanding that the two U.N.-administered camps close before the end of April, and that all people who enter Cambodia without proper documents in the future be treated as illegal immigrants, not asylum seekers.

U.S. officials said all 905 people in the two camps had opted to settle in the United States, rather than being repatriated to their home villages in Vietnam's Central Highlands.

The two camps have been open since March 2001, after the highlanders began pouring into Cambodia following a crackdown by Vietnamese communist authorities against mass protests.

The hill tribe people, who are mostly Christians, accuse Vietnam's communist government of seizing their traditional lands and denying them freedom to practice their religion.

Hanoi distrusts the highlanders, also known as Montagnards, because they helped U.S. forces fight Vietnamese communists during the Vietnam War in the 1960s.

The Montagnards were expected to spend two weeks to a month at the transit center.

U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service officials will begin interviewing prospective immigrants in the coming days.
[end]

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Wednesday April 10, 3:05 PM
Vietnam To Send More Settlers To Central Highlands
HANOI (AFP)

Vietnam to send more settlers to restive highlands - A new wave of ethnic Vietnamese settlers is to be sent to the central highlands, despite protests from local hilltribes there, as the communist authorities seek to ease population pressure in the Red River delta.

The settlers are to be sent from the delta province of Thai Binh to develop new economic zones and state farms in the highland provinces of Dak Lak and Kontum, provincial officials said Wednesday.

From now to 2005, Thai Binh plans to resettle 10,000 migrants a year to relieve immense pressure on land in the province which houses 1.8 million people in an area of just 1,580 square kilometres (632 square miles), the head of the province's labour and migration department, Bui Dinh Khang, told AFP.

"Some of the migrants will be sent in household groups to establish new economic zones; others will be single people sent to work for state farms or defence agencies," Khang said.

The provincial authorities have just reached agreement with their counterparts in Kontum on the settlement of a new economic zone in the highland province, he said.

Dak Lak province already took 100 families from Thai Binh last year and more are due to follow this year.

The central highlands are not the only region in Vietnam to receive settlers from Thai Binh -- migrants have also been moved to the southern province of Ken Giang, which has a large Khmer minority, and the northeastern province of Quang Ninh on the Chinese border.

But the scale of migration to the highlands has sparked anger among the region's indigenous hilltribes which boiled over into a wave of violent protests in February last year, sparking an army crackdown and an exodus of refugees to Cambodia.

During a foreign ministry tour of the region last year, provincial officials told journalists they would prefer not to receive any more ethnic Vietnamese settlers, given the delicacy of relations between the two communities.

Well over a million ethnic Vietnamese settlers have been moved to the central highlands since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 as the communist authorities have cleared the region's forests to grow commodity crops, particularly coffee.

The region's indigenous hilltribes, who have a long history of opposition to the communist authorities, are now in a minority in all of the highlands' four provinces.

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Reuters, Monday, April 15, 2002

Vietnam Tightens Security In Restive Province

HANOI (Reuters)

Vietnam's ruling Communist Party has begun tightening security in its volatile Central Highlands, sending senior officials to reinforce party cells and committees in communes at one highland province, state media said on Monday.

"Their duty is to join the leadership with local officials in all life aspects in order to develop the socio-economy and stabilise the security and national defence at the local level," the Tien Phong (Vanguard)
paper said.

Officials were not immediately available for comment.

Vietnam's Central Highlands region saw its worst protests over land rights and religious freedom in February 2001, after which more than 1,000 hilltribe people fled alleged government crackdowns to Cambodia and stayed on in camps there.

The newspaper said 34 young party members, now managers and deputies at the highland province of Gia Lai's various provincial departments, went out on Monday to work in party cells and people's committees in 34 communes for at least two years.

Tien Phong said the 34 officials would each get an extra sum of cash of one million dong ($66) and a monthly allowance of 400,000 dong ($26) during their mission, apart from the salary.

It was not immediately clear where a similar exercise was taking place in another three central highland provinces.

In January the Communist Party resolved that more senior officials would be sent to the Central Highlands, including police and military personnel, partly aimed at reinforcing areas which had "a pressing demand".

Following the exodus of members of the ethnic hill tribes from Vietnam, some had returned home while several dozen others resettled in the United States amid protests from Hanoi.

On Saturday, Cambodian authorities began moving 905 ethnic minority hilltribe people from the country's northeastern camps to Phnom Penh, where they would await U.S. and U.N preparations for their departure for the United States.

Washington, with past links to the anti-Communist hilltribes who fought alongside U.S. forces in Indochina during the Vietnam War, reached a pact with Cambodia in March to resettle the refugees.

[end] wn

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The Cambodia Daily
Monday, April 15, 2002
Page 1
Montagnard Transport to Phnom Penh Begins
By Seth Meixner, The Cambodia Daily

The first of nearly 400 Montagnard refugees from a UN camp in Ratanakkiri province were airlifted to Phnom Penh Saturday as the UN put into motion the resettlement of hill tribe members who fled Vietnam's Central Highlands last year.

Thirty-seven refugees, carrying almost nothing, were seen stepping off the second of three shuttle flights to arrive Saturday at Phnom Penh's military airport. They were whisked onto a waiting bus, which then pushed its way through the capital's busy streets with a police escort to an unused garment factory where the Montagnards will be processed by US officials in anticipation of their move to the US.

Three more flights arrived from Ratanakkiri Sunday, bringing the total to arrive from that camp to approximately 220. The remaining Ratanakkiri refugees are expected to arrive today and possibly Tuesday.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees expects to transport by road today more than 500 Montagnards from the agency's Mondolkiri province camp to Phnom Penh.

"We've been cooperating extensively with the Cambodian side on all of this and I don't expect any problems," said US Ambassador Kent Wiedemann. Officials from the US Immigration and Naturalization Services will arrive later this week to begin interviewing the Montagnards, who have all said they want to go to the US, Wiedemann said.

The first refugees could be resettled in "a couple of weeks," according to the ambassador.

While there is always a possibility that some of the Montagnards won't qualify for asylum, he said that's "very, very low. The presumption is these people are qualified and they are going to go."

Both US and Cambodian officials hope the resettlements will end Cambodia's year-old refugee crisis, which has strained relations between Cambodia and its more powerful neighbor, Vietnam.

Prime Minister Hun Sen said the UNHCR's camps will be closed and the border with Vietnam sealed after the resettlement. Human rights groups say such moves to keep future asylum seekers from reaching UNHCR protection violates international refugee Conventions.

"Like any government, Cambodia has an obligation under international law to keep its borders open to those fleeing persecution, and to provide at least temporary protection and asylum," said Rachel Reilly in a statement from the US-based Human Rights Watch.

The Cambodian government maintains that anyone else crossing the border is an illegal immigrant and subject to deportation.

"The main purpose of these people is to go to the US through Cambodia," Foreign Minister Hor Namhong said following a meeting with the UNHCR earlier this month.

Observers fear countless others will continue to cross the border.
Vietnam has long had an uneasy relationship with its hill tribe minorities, many of whom fought alongside US soldiers during the war with Vietnam, and continued to wage an anti-communist struggle long after the US withdrew from Vietnam.

"This is the end of the line for these refugees," one observer said Saturday, referring to those already brought to Phnom Penh. "But Cambodia will be dealing with this for the next 10 years. Some of these people were still fighting the Vietnam War until 1992. If they have to dig their way out of Vietnam, they will."

Human rights workers estimate that about 550 Montagnard asylum seekers have been forcibly deported since they began crossing the border last year. A UNHCR repatriation deal signed in January fell apart amid accusations that the Cambodians were handing Montagnards over to the Vietnamese, who have demanded the immediate return of anyone crossing the border, calling them "illegal escapees."

(Additional reporting by Phann Ana)

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European Parliament Passed - Thursday, April 11, 2002

Resolution Passed By The European Parliament

Indigenous minorities in Vietnam and closure of the refugee camps in Cambodia European Parliament resolution on indigenous minorities in Vietnam and closure of the refugee camps in Cambodia The European Parliament,

- having regard to its resolutions of 19 January 1995 on the human rights situation in Vietnam, of 15 May 1997 on human rights in Vietnam, of 12 March 1998 on Cambodia, of 16 November 2000 on Vietnam and of 5 July 2001 on religious freedom in Vietnam,

- having regard to the UN Convention on the Status of Refugees of 1951 and its 1967 Protocol,

- having regard to the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1966,

- having regard to the 1995 Cooperation Agreement between the European Union and Vietnam,

- having regard to the Tripartite Agreement signed on 21 January 2002 between Cambodia, Vietnam and the UNHCR,

A. whereas Cambodia is a party to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, which prohibits forcible repatriation of asylum seekers to a country where their life or freedom may be threatened,

B. whereas Vietnam and Cambodia as parties to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) are obliged to uphold the freedoms of speech, association, religious belief and worship,

C. concerned by the continued persecution of indigenous minorities from Vietnam's Central Highlands - known as Montagnards - since the demonstrations that took place in February 2001 in protest against the confiscation of their ancestral land, the influx of lowland Vietnamese settlers taking their agricultural land, the lack of freedom of worship for the members of the unauthorised evangelical protestant churches and the denial of basic rights and freedoms, including education in their native languages,

D. whereas the [Montagnards] have a specific linguistic and ethnic identity which they wish to see respected in a context of autonomy,

E. whereas the Cambodian authorities have always been reluctant to grant them political asylum and now wish to close the refugee camps and authorise their occupants to seek asylum in third countries, particularly the United States,

F. having regard to the demographically driven movement of Vietnam's population in thedirection of Vietnam's Central Highlands and Cambodia, despite the fact that the resources available to Cambodia make it ill-equipped to deal with this influx,

G. whereas the Tripartite Agreement between the UNHCR, Cambodia and Vietnam provided for repatriation under the auspices of the UNHCR of the approximately 1,000 Montagnards who fled to Cambodia as a consequence of violations of their human rights and are currently sheltered at the two UNHCR sites in Mondolkiri and Ratanakiri,

H. deeply concerned by the decision of the Cambodian and Vietnamese Governments to attempt to implement the repatriation agreement bilaterally before this year's rainy season, as well as the refusal by the Vietnamese Government to permit UNHCR monitoring teams to visit the villages of potential returnees,

I. whereas the consequent withdrawal of UNHCR from the Tripartite Agreement and the termination of its involvement with the repatriation process leave the asylum seekers exposed to the risk of undue influence, intimidation and coercion to return to Vietnam,

J. whereas in the past year more than 200 refugees have been forcibly returned to Vietnam by the Cambodian provincial authorities, with some of them being detained and beaten by the Vietnamese authorities on their return,

K. whereas respect for human rights and democratic principles is an essential element in the 1995 EC-Vietnam cooperation agreement, as well as in the 1999 EC-Cambodia cooperation agreement,

1. Calls on all parties (Cambodia, Vietnam and the UNHCR) to seek a lasting solution to the plight of the Montagnard asylum seekers;

2. Urges the Cambodian Government to uphold its obligations as a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, in particular by ensuring that any repatriation of Montagnards to Vietnam is conducted on a voluntary basis, and by guaranteeing that asylum seekers arriving in Cambodia are not denied their basic right of asylum;

3. Calls for the suspension of the repatriation programmes until firm guarantees are given by both governments that the returns are completely voluntary and the lives of the Montagnards concerned will not be threatened once they are back in Vietnam;

4. Calls on the Government of Vietnam to end the arbitrary detention of highlanders who have returned from Cambodia to Vietnam either voluntarily or against their will;

5. Calls on the Commission to help the Vietnamese authorities to develop their country in such a way as to put an end to the economic exodus of its population;

6. Calls on the Commission to assist the Government of Vietnam in its programme to reduce poverty and improve living conditions in the Central Highlands region;

7. Calls on the Government of Vietnam to allow UNHCR staff access to Vietnam's Central Highlands to monitor the situation of returning asylum seekers, and on the parties to the Tripartite Agreement to resume their cooperation, in particular by allowing UNHCR to station monitors in the region with a view to conducting visits before, during and after any repatriation;

8. Calls on the Vietnamese Government to release unconditionally all persons in the Central Highlands who are being detained for peacefully expressing their political or religious beliefs, including protestant church activists and supporters of the highland independent movement;

9. Calls for Vietnamese nationals not to be repatriated against their will; calls on the Commission to assist the Government of Cambodia with receiving people coming from Vietnam;

10. Calls on the Member States to offer shelter to some of the Vietnamese refugees;

11. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the Government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the Government of the Kingdom of Cambodia, ASEAN and the UN.

[end]


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Rueters April 13, 2002, Saturday 09:38 Central European Time
Cambodia Starts Resettling Vietnam Refugees
DATELINE: Phnom Penh
Reuters, Saturday, April 13, 2002

Cambodia on Saturday started the process of resettling 905 hilltribe asylum seekers to the United States after a tug of war over their status involving neighbouring Vietnam, Washington and the United Nations.

Government officials said the hilltribe people were being moved from refugee camps in the northeastern part of the country to capital Phnom Penh where they would await U.S. and U.N. preparations for their departure for the United States.

Washington, with past links to anti-Communist hilltribes who fought alongside U.S. forces in Indochina during the Vietnam War, reached an agreement with Cambodia last month to resettle the refugees.

Over 1,000 hilltribe people had fled Vietnam's Central Highlands to refugee camps in Cambodia in the past year after Hanoi sent troops to the region to quell protests by ethnic minority groups seeking land ownership and religious freedom.

Some of them have since returned home. Several dozen others were resettled in the United States amid protests from Phnom Penh's old ally Hanoi.

General Sok Phal, Cambodian interior ministry information chief, said 37 refugees flew to Phnom Penh from Cambodia's remote Ratanakiri province on Saturday and another two groups of about the same number were due to arrive later on Saturday.

"In the next three days, we will bring 373 refugees on nine flights from Ratanakiri province. When the refugee camp in Ratanakiri is done, we will begin taking refugees from Mondulkiri province. Everything is going smoothly," Sok Phal told Reuters by phone.

Over 500 hilltribe refugees sheltered at a U.N. camp in northeastern Mondulkiri province are expected to arrive by trucks in Phnom Penh on Monday.

The first group of refugees flew to Phnom Penh on Saturday in a Cambodian military plane before being transported by bus to an empty suburban factory in the capital, military sources said.

The factory will serve as a reception centre for the refugees in the next few weeks while they wait to be processed by U.S. immigration and U.N. refugee agency officials preparing for their departure to the United States.

The U.N. had recently suspended plans to repatriate the refugees to Vietnam after reports that Phnom Penh had forcibly deported asylum seekers.

Hanoi had adopted strong measures aimed at persuading the refugees to return home and over 100 had previously agreed to return to Vietnam.

The hilltribe refugee issue has strained relations between Phnom Penh and Hanoi, which had vigorously insisted that they be deported back to Vietnam as illegal immigrants.

After Phnom Penh announced it would allow the United States to resettle the 905 refugees, Cambodia said it would not allow more ethnic hilltribesmen to enter the country and close U.N. camps, a decision seen by many as a move to placate Hanoi.

Hanoi accused the United States in 2001 for interfering in its internal affairs after Washington resettled the first 38 asylum seekers who fled to Cambodia from Vietnam.

[end]


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Agence France-Presse
US Airlift Of Montagnards Begins
Saturday, April 13, 2002

US begins airlift of 1,000 Vietnamese refugees in Cambodia The United States and the United Nations have begun airlifting about 1,000 Vietnamese refugees from Cambodia's remote north-east on Saturday to the capital Phnom Penh, officials said.

Officials said three aircraft were being used to ferry the refugees, who fled Vietnam's central highlands across the border into Cambodia, and the operation should be completed by the end of Monday.

"They'll be flying them down over the next three days," sources close to the UN said.

The mainly Christian hill-tribe refugees, known as Montagnards, have over the last 12 months fled a Vietnamese military crackdown on ethnic minority unrest in the troubled and impoverished Central Highlands.

The US offered asylum to the refugees last month after the United Nations pulled out of a voluntary repatriation program with Vietnam and Cambodia, accusing both sides of violating the terms of the accord.

The scheme had been frozen since February, after Hanoi refused to grant the UNHCR access to the refugees' home villages.

The UN pull-out came after it claimed more than 400 Vietnamese arrived at a refugee camp in Mondulkiri province on March 21 and "threatened and manhandled" refugees and UNHCR staff.

Observers said the airlift was deliberately timed to coincide with the Khmer new year's day, which falls Sunday and results in the entire country closing down.
[end]

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Associated Press, Saturday, April 13, 2002
Montagnard Asylum Seekers Begin Trek To The United States By Chris Decherd Associated Press Writer

PHNOM PENH - More than 900 ethnic minority asylum seekers were set to take their first steps toward the United States Saturday as officials begin transporting them from U.N. camps in northeastern Cambodia to a makeshift processing center, U.S. Ambassador Kent Wiedemann said.

More than two weeks have passed since Cambodia agreed to allow the highlanders, who fled Vietnam, to leave for resettlement in the United States. The decision annoyed Vietnamese leaders, who said the U.S. offer to resettle the asylum seekers was politically motivated.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen attempted to soothe Vietnam by demanding that the United Nations close two camps before the end of April, and ordering that all people who enter Cambodia without proper documents in the future are treated as illegal entrants, not asylum seekers.

Wiedemann, the U.S. ambassador to Cambodia, said all 905 asylum seekers in the two camps had opted to be settled in the United States instead of to going back to their home villages in Vietnam's Central Highlands.

The two camps opened in March 2001, when highlanders, also known as Montagnards, began pouring into Cambodia after Vietnamese communist authorities cracked down on land rights protests.

The asylum seekers were expected to spend between two weeks and a month at an abandoned factory on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, which has been converted to a temporary shelter, while U.S. Immigration and Naturalization officials interview the prospective immigrants.

A military aircraft will start carrying the asylum seekers on Saturday from the U.N.-run camp in Banlung, the capital of the northeastern province of Ratanakkiri, to Phnom Penh. The operation will last three days, Wiedemann said.

Asylum seekers from the second camp in Sen Monorom, the capital of the northeastern province of Mondulkiri, were due to be moved to Phnom Penh by truck on Sunday or Monday.
[end]

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The Cambodia Daily,
Saturday, April 13, 2002; page 3
National Briefing
Montagnards to be Moved to Phnom Penh
Preparations are being made to move the 905 Montagnard refugees under UN protection from camps in the provinces to Phnom Penh over the Khmer New Year.

Officials say the move could be made Sunday. The Montagnards are expected to be housed in an unused garment factory near Olympic Stadium while they are processed for resettlement in the US.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees expects to drive more than 500 Montagnards out of its Mondolkiri camp, while the more than 300 refugees in Ratanakkiri will be flown to the capital, one observer said Friday.
The Montagnards are part of a larger group that began fleeing Vietnam's Central Highland last year and have since demanded to go to the US.

Cambodia only recently agreed to let them seek asylum overseas after attempts by the UNHCR to repatriate them failed.

Following the move, the UNHCR's camps will be closed and no other asylum seekers allowed across the border -- an order that has drawn heavy fire from human rights groups, who say it violates human rights conventions.
Seth Meixner
[end]

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The Cambodia Daily
Thursday, April 11, 2002; page 1

Observer:
VN Offering Cash For Refugee
By Seth Meixner and Thet Sambath
The Cambodia Daily

Vietnamese agents are reportedly offering Cambodian officials in Mondolkiri province a "large sum" of money to turn over jailed Montagnard refugee Y Hung, who human rights workers say is considered a political agitator by the Vietnamese government.

Y Hung was arrested last month and charged by Cambodian authorities with allegedly kidnapping a young woman who lives near the UN High Commissioner for Refugees camp in Mondolkiri.

The accusation has been denied by the young woman, Nhi Neung, who says she is Y Hung's wife and repeatedly visited him in the camp on her own volition. Nhi Neung says Cambodian authorities tried to pressure her into filing rape charges against Y Hung in exchange for $2,500.

Rights workers and other observers say Cambodian officials have no evidence against Y Hung, and claim his arrest is a bid by the Vietnamese to disrupt the ongoing Montagnard resettlement preparations.

It now appears the Vietnamese are trying to seize Y Hung by offering money to Cambodian authorities, an observer said Wednesday.

A human rights worker recently called Y Hung one of the three men most wanted by Vietnamese authorities for their role in organizing the yearlong exodus of Montagnards from Vietnam's Central Highlands.

US Ambassador Kent Wiedemann said Wednesday that he has raised Y Hung's case "in a very high-profile way with a very authoritative [Cambodian] official" and received assurances that Y Hung will not be handed over to the Vietnamese.

"This gentleman is being looked at exclusively under Cambodian law....
If those assurances are not honored I would be very disturbed, and that could have consequences," Wiedemann said.

Vietnamese Ambassador Nguyen Duy Hung said Wednesday he was not aware of Y Hung's imprisonment, or of any other people in the UNHCR camps who are being sought by authorities for breaking the law in Vietnam.

He said Vietnam will continue to offer "safe, voluntary and dignified"
repatriation to the Montagnards, but will seek the extradition of anyone suspected of violating the law.

Plans are being made to move the 905 Montagnards under UNHCR protection from the agency's two camps in northeast ern Cambodia to Phnom Penh, where they will be processed before being resettled in the US.

Provincial police officials say the move won't begin until after the Khmer New Year. It's unclear if the move will affect Y Hung.

"Y Hung is under the court's jurisdiction. We have no right to involve ourselves in Y Hung's future and whether or not he will be sent to Phnom Penh," said Khoy Khunhear, first deputy governor of Mondolkiri province.

[end]

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Copyright 2002 Deutsche Presse-Agentur January 28, 2002, Monday 10:25 Central European Time SECTION: Miscellaneous LENGTH: 392 words DATELINE: Hanoi

Vietnam Jails Montagnards For Aiding Asylum Seekers

Vietnam has thrown four indigenous people in jail in the troubled Central Highlands for helping hilltribe minorities escape into Cambodia, state media reported Monday.

A people's court in Gia Lai province's Chu Se district meted out sentences of three and a half to six and a half years for four members of the Jarai minority for "organizing for people to flee the country illegally", the communist party mouthpiece Nhan Dan (The People) reported.

The defendants, identified as Siu Beng, Siu Be, H'Noch and K'Pa H'Linh, were said to have helped at least 82 people cross the border last April, two months after widespread unrest rocked the highlands.

The newspaper said the verdicts were "a good lesson for those who easily believe in the so-called independent De Ga state", referring to ongoing calls for autonomy for the highland Montagnards.

The Friday trials came just days after Vietnam participated in Phnom Penh meetings with Cambodia and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to seek a settlement in the refugee issue.

At the meeting, the Vietnamese gave assurances that returnees would not be punished or subjected to discriminatory treatment.

Roughly 1,000 Montagnards are thought to have escaped into Cambodia, with more than 800 reaching UNHCR camps there and registering for refugee status.
An initial group of refugees was resettled in the United States, while others have been housed in two sites in Cambodia.

There have been several accounts by human rights groups of forced repatriation by Cambodian authorities in violation of the 1951 convention relating to the status of refugees. Cambodia signed the convention.
Vietnam approved UNHCR proposals for teams to monitor repatriation of the Montagnards, although access is expected to be limited and must be conditional to Vietnamese approval.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch expressed concern about the agreement, saying the report signed by the three parties made no mention of the fact that any return of refugees to Vietnam must be voluntary.

"We are concerned that this agreement may send a green light to both the Cambodian and Vietnamese authorities that it is now acceptable to forcibly expel Montagnards seeking asylum in Cambodia," said Human Rights Watch's Rachael Reilly said in a statement.
LOAD-DATE: January 28, 2002

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The Cambodia Daily, Monday, January 28, 2002; page 1 Diplomat: VN Trials Bode Ill For UN Pact By Molly Ball
The Cambodia Daily

VN Trials Bode Ill For UN Pact

The sentencing to prison of four Montagnards by the Vietnamese government is "not a good sign" for the recently negotiated agreement to repatriate the 1,000 hill tribe members living under UN protection in Cambodia, US Ambassador Kent Wiedemann said Sunday.

Four ethnic Jarai were tried Friday in Hanoi and sentenced to as many as 6 1/2 years in prison for "organizing illegal departures" to Cambodia, Agence France-Presse reported.

AFP quoted a Vietnamese court official as saying the four had "violated Vietnam's laws" by "provoking" 83 Montagnards to flee to Cambodia and contacting a US-based "reactionary organization."

"I find the charges difficult to believe," Wiedemann said Sunday. "The US is not in any way encouraging or condoning, and is unaware of, any attempts by people in the US to encourage Vietnamese citizens, Montagnard or otherwise, to flee their country.

"If people leave Vietnam and seek refurgee status, we believe it is because they fear ill treatment at the hands of Vietnamese authorities.... They are being ill-treated not for violating the law, but for their ethnicity, religion and political views."

An agreement signed last Monday by Cambodia, Vietnam and regional officials from the UN High Commission for Refugees provides for voluntary repatriation of Montagnards, who come from Vietnam's Central Highlands. It also guarantees they will not be subject to retribution if they return.

But human rights groups have criticized the plan, saying it could force Montagnards to be deported against their will. Wiedemann and the US State Department have also complained that the agreement does not specifically spell out that the repatriation must be voluntary.
Nikola Mihajlovic, head of the UNHCR's liaison office in Phnom Penh, who has defended the repatriation plan as "a break-through," said Sunday he could not comment on the Hanoi sentencings because he had no information about them.

"Unless the Vietnamese government stops persecuting [Montagnards], they will continue to seek asylum," Wiedemann said. "The Vietnamese government told UNHCR last week that they would seek to treat the Montagnards better and respect their rights. Only under such circumstances will Vietnam be able to convince them to come back."

[end]

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HANOI, Jan 31 (AFP)

UNHCR Makes First Visit To Central Highlands

Representatives of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) made their first field trip to Vietnam's restive central highlands Thursday under a controversial refugee repatriation deal signed last week, UN officials said.

Two UNHCR staff from Hanoi, one a Swede and the other a Vietnamese national, held talks with provincial and district officials in the highland province of Dak Lak, the agency's regional coordinator, Jahanshah Assadi, told AFP.

"The UNHCR was very warmly welcomed and were assured that we would enjoy their full cooperation," Assadi said. "Tomorrow we will start to actually go out and look around more extensively."

Hundreds of refugees fled Vietnam's central highlands last year following an army crackdown on a wave of protest among the region's mainly Christian hill peoples against their growing marginalizationgest number of refugees fled, and the adjacent district of Dak Gheng.

But the UNHCR plans to reinforce the staff of its small office in Hanoi from Monday and launch more intensive visits to other parts of the highlands. Assadi himself hopes to visit the region next week.
Diplomats, journalists and other independent observers have been largely excluded from the highlands since last February's unrest.

Overseas news organizations based in Hanoi are to be admitted to the region in late February for only the second time since the army's crackdown.

kir/br n

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29-Jan-2002 ZENIT.org News Agency

VIETNAM CRACKING DOWN ON CHRISTIAN TRIBES IN MOUNTAINS

U.N. Funds Sterilization Program, Paper Reports ROME, (Zenit.org).- Vietnam recently launched a new campaign of repression against its Montagnards, or mountain people, forcing them to drink pigs´ blood and renounce their Christian faith publicly, the newspaper Avvenire reports.

Armed forces and security agents converged on tribes living in the central highlands, most of them Protestants, in mid-December, the Italian newspaper reported Saturday. Raids, arrests, tortures and disappearances ensued, the paper said.

Avvenire also reported that the Vietnamese authorities have received the support of the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA). According to the Save the Montagnards organization, UNFPA is funding a strict program of birth control that includes sterilization.

Last year, UNFPA allocated $17.9 million to Vietnam, specifically for programs for the Montagnards, the newspaper said.

The December attacks against the Montagnards were concentrated in the province of Daklak, according to a report published by the Montagnard Foundation.

The culminating point of the operation took place in several villages on Dec. 24-25. Two hundred policemen and soldiers arrived in Bion Sup, Buon Ea Rok and Buon Koya, and began to destroy the Christmas decorations.

They "threatened to arrest, strike and incarcerate the Montagnards who left their homes to pray," Avvenire reported.

Moreover, "they killed a pig and forced the Montagnards to drink its blood," a ritual connected to animist traditions, the paper said.
Finally, they obliged Christians "to renounce their faith publicly."

Three hundred Montagnard refugees who tried to flee into Cambodia were detained by that country´s soldiers on Dec. 28-29. The Cambodian government then sold many of the refugees back to the Vietnamese authorities.

The refugees, including many women and children, were taken to the Dak Mil district and tortured, before they disappeared altogether, according to local residents.

Repression of the Montagnards is not new. But it seems to have intensified over the past two years, following a massive conversion to Christianity in the region.

The Montagnards had a difficult life during the French occupation and also with the government of South Vietnam, despite the fact that during the Vietnam War many were persuaded to side with the Americans.

This led the Communists to step up their repression, beginning in 1975. A key part of the new campaign is "cultural leveling," whereby the regime wants to uproot and absorb all minority cultures in Vietnam.

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Reuters
Tuesday, January 29, 2002

Vietnam To Send Extra Police To Central Highlands

HANOI, Jan 29 (Reuters)

Vietnam's ruling Communist Party has ordered police and military reinforcements for the restive Central Highlands, official media reported on Tuesday.

The party's mouthpiece Nhan Dan (People) daily quoted a resolution by the elite Politburo as saying senior officials would be sent to the region as well as to southwestern and northwestern provinces.

The resolution did not give any timeframe but said the move was partly aimed at reinforcing areas which have "a pressing demand."

The Central Highlands saw Vietnam's worst protests over land rights and religious freedom in February.

A controversial agreement was reached by Vietnam, Cambodia and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees this month to allow for the repatriation of around 1,000 tribespeople who fled to Cambodia last year following a crackdown on the unrest.

The agreement has already been criticised by rights groups and the United States for lacking sufficient safeguards.
Vietnam's southwestern provinces share a border with Cambodia where there has been an increase in reported smuggling and prostitution.

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Reuters
Tuesday, January 24, 2002
US Doubts On UN, Hanoi Deal Over Cambodia Refugees
By Kevin Doyle PHNOM PENH Jan 24 (Reuters)

The United States is concerned about a United Nations plan to repatriate asylum seekers who fled to Cambodia after a government crackdown in Vietnam last year, the U.S. ambassador to Cambodia said on Thursday.

Kent Wiedemann told Reuters in an interview the agreement reached on Monday between the U.N. refugee agency, Hanoi and Cambodia to allow the return of more than 1,000 ethnic minority asylum seekers to Vietnam's Central Highlands was vague on key details.

He said Washington would contact the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and the Vietnamese and Cambodian governments about the deal UNHCR said came after Hanoi accepted its demands for access to monitor the safety of those who volunteered to return.

But Wiedemann said the four-page text of the agreement contained no reference to a "voluntary return," nor defined the number or scope of visits Hanoi will allow to the highlands.

"The U.S. government are concerned. The agreement...signed simply lacked reference to many fundamental issues," he said.

"There is no reference to this being voluntary repatriation. Thus leaving the inference, perhaps, that these people are simply illegal immigrants."

"It also left very hazy the agreement on access to Vietnam by UNHCR (the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) to report on the source problems that created this exodus."

About 1,000 asylum seekers are holed up in two U.N. camps in Cambodia after fleeing a crackdown by Hanoi on protests over land rights and religious freedom that broke out in the Central Highlands last February.

VIETNAM ANGERED The protests were the worst to hit communist-ruled Vietnam for years and Hanoi and Washington became embroiled in a diplomatic storm last year after the first 38 minority refugees to flee were resettled in America.

Asked about U.S. criticism of the accord, Vietnam's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh said there was no reason for concerns over the safety of returnees, although she repeatedly stressed that the people had left Vietnam "illegally."

"Vietnam is second to none in caring about the safety of its citizens," she said. "At the recent meeting, all the parties have affirmed that the ethnic people who illegally crossed the border will return in an orderly, safe and in a dignified manner."

She said U.S. criticism was aimed only at raising concerns among the returnees.

"That has made people ask whether the United States is really worried for the fate of Vietnamese citizens, or they themselves are willing to carry out a plot to obstruct the process of repatriating the illegal border crossers and cause instability."

Wiedemann defended the U.S. involvement saying it was an international concern.
"The U.S. has every right to be concerned. The fact refugees have crossed an international border and have been accorded a protected status makes this very much an international issue."

He reiterated that the United States was willing to resettle hilltribe asylum seekers who chose not to go back to Vietnam.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said last week systematic persecution of minorities in the highlands had continued and any repatriation needed to be voluntary and closely monitored.

Hilltribe communities in the Central Highlands have long been suspected by Hanoi because of their Christian faith and allegiance to U.S. forces during the Vietnam War.

Many of the hill people have settled in the United States since the war and Vietnam has blamed the Central Highlands unrest on agitation by some of the U.S.-based exiles.

[end]


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