Montagnards Flee Persecution in Vietnam For Unsure Future in Cambodia
RFA – 10/08/2015
Ethnic Montagnards who have fled Vietnam for Cambodia say they are forced to
leave after enduring relentless persecution by authorities in their home
country, but regularly face difficulties when they apply for asylum across the
border.
About 200 Montagnards have entered Cambodia illegally from Vietnam’s Central
Highlands since late last year, claiming they are escaping political and
religious discrimination back home, but Cambodian officials said last month that
only 13 of them will be granted asylum and the rest deported.
One 40-year-old Montagnard who is currently living in Cambodia told RFA’s
Vietnamese Service that he was unable to support his wife and three young
children because of regular harassment by authorities in Vietnam, and while it
pained him to leave his family on their own, he “had no choice” but to flee.
"If there was no oppression, I would prefer living in Vietnam—I didn’t want to
leave my wife, children and my house behind,” he said, adding that he was in a
constant state of fear at the time.
“When I arrived in Cambodia, my wife and children were devastated.”
But after crossing the border, the Montagnard—who spoke to RFA on condition of
anonymity—said he had faced difficulty adjusting to life in Cambodia and could
not obtain refugee status.
“I don’t know what to do here,” he said.
“I cry out of fear, but if I return [to Vietnam] the police will continue to
monitor me and force me to undergo interrogations. I am scared.”
A Montagnard woman from central Vietnam’s Gia Lai province, whose husband was
among a group of nine Christians who have been in hiding in Phnom Penh since
arriving in Cambodia last month, said he had been relentlessly hassled by
authorities over his religion in their home village of Ia Pet, in Dok Doa
district.
“Police kept ordering him to go to the village office for talks, to the point
where he could not eat or even sleep in peace,” said the woman, who also
declined to provide her name, adding that her husband had been severely
distressed because “they would not listen to him or leave him alone.”
Since her husband left, the woman told RFA that village authorities have
routinely questioned her over his whereabouts.
“The local police are looking for him. They ask me where he is, what he is
doing,” she said.
“I’m afraid that they will arrest my husband again [if he returns], like last
time. They have detained him before.”
Vietnam’s Central Highlands are home to some 30 tribes of indigenous
peoples—known collectively as Montagnards, or the Degar—who suffer extreme
persecution, according to rights groups.
Early in the last decade, thousands in the region staged violent protests
against the confiscation of their ancestral lands and religious controls,
prompting a brutal crackdown by Vietnamese security forces that saw hundreds of
Montagnards charged with national security crimes.
Representatives of the minority group have said they are only calling for
indigenous land rights and basic human rights in Vietnam, despite attempts by
Hanoi to link them to overseas separatist groups.
Unrecognized refugees
Authorities in Cambodia maintain that the scores of Montagnards who have crossed
into the country from Vietnam are not political or religious refugees, but
farmers who have entered the country for economic reasons.
On Wednesday, Cambodia’s Ministry of Interior spokesman Khieu Sopheak told RFA
that the Montagnards who recently entered the country do not meet the conditions
of refugee status because “they do not live under oppression in Vietnam or face
any threat due to war or political crisis.”
Instead, they entered Cambodia “with the help of an organization under the guise
of [seeking] charity,” he said, adding that when members of the ethnic group in
Vietnam heard that 13 Montagnards were being granted asylum, “it triggered a
wave of refugees.”
“Upon entering Cambodia, they did not report to the Cambodian authorities to
apply for refugee status. Instead, they were taken to the UNHCR (United Nations
refugee agency),” Khieu Sopheak said.
“Their office does not cooperate with us. They just took those people in and
rented houses for almost 100 of them,” he said.
“We have our sovereignty to protect, so what should we do?”
Khieu Sopheak added that the UNHCR must repatriate the nine Christian
Montagnards to Vietnam within three months or Cambodia would deport them,
despite their claims that Vietnamese authorities “arrest and torture” them
whenever they practice their religion.
On Thursday, the nine told RFA they were running out of food and money, and
urged nongovernmental organizations and the U.N. to assist them. One of the
group’s members said they would rather submit to arrest in Cambodia than face
imprisonment in Vietnam.
They also denied suggestions that they had received help when they set out from
Vietnam on Sept. 23 and crossed into Cambodia, other than from a Cambodian
farmer who helped them hail a taxi to Phnom Penh after they spent five nights
walking through the jungle in Ratanakiri.
Chhay Thy, provincial coordinator of human rights group Adhoc in Ratanakiri,
told RFA that Montagnards entering Cambodia were initially hiding in the forests
and waiting for assistance from the U.N. and local authorities, but had changed
their strategy after the government began deploying troops to detain and
repatriate them.
“Recently, we don’t see them in the forests—instead they go directly to the
U.N.’s office,” he said.
“We can’t verify information that they are receiving assistance, but if so, it
is the right of refugees to seek it out and that is their own business.”
Group repatriation
Also on Thursday, authorities in Cambodia repatriated a group of 24 Montagnards
who had volunteered to return to Vietnam after being refused refugee status,
according to an official with the UNHCR, which coordinated the move.
The group, which included four children and had been in Cambodia since July,
left Phnom Penh on Wednesday and was sent back across the border after spending
a night at a hotel in Ratankiri, UNHCR spokeswoman Vivian Tan confirmed to RFA’s
Khmer Service in an emailed statement.
“Twenty-four people have volunteered to go back to Vietnam and we are
facilitating it at their request,” she said, adding that around 200 other
Montagnards remain unregistered by authorities in Cambodia.
Provincial Immigration Department chief Moeun Khem confirmed that the U.N. had
organized the repatriation.
RFA was unable to interview any of the Montagnards due to tight security during
the repatriation.
Tan Sovichea, general director of the Ministry of Interior’s Refugee Department,
refused to comment on why the group was refused refugee status, referring
questions back to the spokesman’s office.
Reported by Son Trung for RFA’s Vietnamese Service, and Ratha Visal and Tha
Kithya for RFA’s Khmer Service. Translated by Viet Ha and Samean Yun. Written in
English by Joshua Lipes.