The immediate deportation of 63 Montagnards in Ratanakkiri province Saturday has drawn fire from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees as it struggles to maintain control over the repatriation of more than 1,000 hill tribe asylum seekers under its protection in Cambodia.
Cambodian officials arrested the Montagnards before they reached a UNHCR camp in the province and sent them back to Vietnam’s Central Highlands, a UNHCR news release stated.
Following a Vietnamese crackdown in the highlands a year ago, hundreds began fleeing into Cambodia’s Ratanakkiri and Mondolkiri provinces.
The UNHCR, Cambodia and Vietnam signed a repatriation agreement last month. A total of 76 Montagnards have voluntarily returned home, including 61 who left Ratanakkiri on Saturday.
Efforts to return more Montagnards stalled after it appeared Vietnam was pressuring Cambodia to send back asylum seekers before the UNHCR could monitor the situation in the Central Highlands, where the agency’s teams have been denied access to key hill tribe villages.
Saturday’s deportations are another blow to the already crumbling repatriation deal, the UNHCR said.
“These actions…clearly undermine the spirit of the tripartite process,” Nikola Mihajlovic, the UNHCR’s Phnom Penh chief, wrote saturday in a letter to Prime Minister Hun Sen.
The deportations also reinforced fears Cambodia is engaging in what one observer described as a game of “cat and mouse” with the UNHCR—trying to track down and deport Montagnards coming across the border before they can seek refuge with the agency.
“Such actions, which are clearly in contravention with the international obligations under the 1951 Convention on Refugees…to which the Royal Government of Cambodia is a signatory, are of serious concern to UNHCR,” Mihajlovic wrote.
The deportations “contradict assurances…of continued temporary asylum for the Vietnamese Montagnards in Cambodia, including any new arrivals.”
But the Cambodian government appears to be stepping up efforts to close its borders, saying those deported were illegal immigrants rather than asylum seekers.
“The government has not changed its policy toward the Vietnamese hill tribe people in the camps. But we have no policy to let them get into the camp,” Deputy Prime Minister Sar Kheng said Sunday.
Cambodian authorities had no idea if the Montagnards were trying to reach the UNHCR, but have an obligation to protect Cambodia’s borders, Sar Kheng said Sunday.
“Every country, including America, has done this if people have crossed their borders illegally,” he said.
The Associated Press quoted the Vietnamese Communist Party newspaper Nhan Dan (People) as reporting that about 250 relatives of Vietnamese hill tribe members who fled into Cambodia have signed a petition urging they be repatriated before the start of the rainy season in April.
The Communist Party newspaper said the request was signed by the relatives at a meeting Friday organized by the Fatherland Front, a Communist Party-controlled organization, in Gia Lai province. The petition asked the governments of Vietnam and Cambodia and the UNHCR to repatriate the migrants as soon as possible.
“Recognizing the true face of the hostile forces which intentionally distorted, caused disturbances and sowed division among the ethnic groups, many relatives of the illegal migrants have called for their early return,” the report stated.
