An opposition lawmaker called on King Norodom Sihanouk to pave the way for refugee camps to be set up along the northeast border, following Montagnard demonstrations in Vietnam’s Central Highlands last weekend.
“Your Majesty must urgently intervene and remove any obstacles which would allow for the establishment of refugee camps, in particular, in the Ratanakkiri and Mondolkiri provinces,” Sam Rainsy Party parliamentarian Son Chhay wrote to the King in a letter dated Sunday.
UN refugee camps were set up in the northeast after Vietnam quashed Montagnard protests for land rights and religious freedom in 2001. The next year, the camps were dismantled and about 900 Montagnards were transferred to Phnom Penh, where they were processed for resettlement in the US.
Similar Montagnard protests last weekend have spurred Vietnam to lock down the Central Highlands, prohibiting diplomats, the UN and international journalists from entering the region. There is little information about the protests, but news agencies and human rights groups have reported several Montagnards were killed and dozens wounded.
Following government orders on Sunday to beef up border security, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the opposition and human rights groups have requested the border remain open for Montagnard asylum seekers. At least 59 Montagnards have arrived at the UNHCR office in Phnom Penh since January.
In his letter to the King, Son Chhay criticized Prime Minister Hun Sen for closing “our country’s borders to the Montagnard desperately fleeing decades of brutal Vietnamese persecution. Surely the lesson we have learned from our experience of living under the cruelty of the Pol Pot regime is that repression of any peoples must not be tolerated.”
The King, who is in North Korea did not respond to Son Chhay’s letter on his Web site Tuesday, but in the past has called on the government to aid Montagnards and fulfill its obligations under the refugee convention.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch has called on Vietnam to quickly open the Central Highlands to international observers and “for Cambodia to honor its obligations under the Refugee Convention not to seal the border or to force back Montagnards trying to seek asylum in Cambodia,” a representative said by telephone Tuesday. The group has received reports that at least 270 Montagnards were deported from Cambodia last year.
Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak did not answer phone calls on Tuesday.
Vietnamese repression of the Montagnards had intensified since January, as police began extensive searches, sometimes with dogs, for Montagnards in hiding, the Human Rights Watch representative said. In the last three years, the group estimates, hundreds of Montagnards disappeared or hid in camouflaged dug-outs in the forest, in coffee plantations, in holes under people’s homes or in mountain top caves.
“Armed with assault rifles and electric shock batons, these elite [Vietnamese] police squads have been conducting systematic ‘sweeping’ operations throughout the Central Highlands in the months leading up to last weekend’s demonstrations,” the Human Rights Watch official said.
Vietnam has denied any repression of the Montagnards.
“Over the past few days, some extremist elements in several localities in Dak Lak and Gia Lai provinces, with instigation from outside, have carried out activities causing public disorder,” Le Dzung, spokesman for Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a statement on Monday.
Saying that the situation is now stabilized and “all aspects of life in these areas are normal,” Le Dzung added: “We vehemently reject all ill-willed, distortive rhetorics on the so-called ‘ethnic and religious persecution’ in Vietnam.”
Human rights advocates, including UN human rights envoy Peter Leuprecht, have blamed Vietnamese pressure for Cambodia’s policy of defining Montagnards as illegal immigrants and summarily deporting them.
“I’m sure Hanoi and Phnom Penh are very close on this issue,” Nikola Mihajlovic, UNHCR country representative, said Monday.
