The government has again accused the UN refugees agency of secretly moving Montagnard asylum seekers from border areas of Vietnam to Phnom Penh, a practice that it says could turn Cambodia into a terrorist haven, according Interior Ministry documents obtained Thursday.
“The most concern is that if the [UN High Commissioner for Refugees] still undertake such violation activities, Cambodia will, no doubt, become a country which support the acts of illegal immigration and other forms of crimes,” said the ministry document, titled “Aide Memoire on Illegal Activities of the UNHCR in Cambodia.”
The Interior Ministry document added that Cambodia could “also [be] seen by the world as the place for the concealment of the International terrorists.”
The recent Interior Ministry notice, which was sent to the UNHCR with a Foreign Affairs Ministry statement dated March 18 that called the refugee office “arrogant,” comes in the midst of a new influx of about 40 Montagnards who arrived at the UNHCR’s Phnom Penh office in the past month.
“Following the consent to close the refugee camps in Mondolkiri and Ratanakkiri Provinces, the UNHCR still continues to hide its agents along the border of Mondolkiri and Ratanakkiri provinces to take action so as to lure and gather the Vietnamese Montagnards,” the notice said.
“Those Vietnamese Montagnards who were lured by the agents of the UNHCR were moved secretly to Phnom Penh and were accommodated illegally in many unknown places including Catholic churches to wait for [an] opportunity to complete formality to gain refugee status before sending them out,” the notice went on.
UNHCR country representative Nikola Mihajlovic did not answer repeated calls for comment on Thursday.
Following a crackdown on protests for land rights and religious freedom in Vietnam’s Central Highlands in 2001, more than 1,000 Montagnard asylum seekers fled into Ratanakkiri and Mondolkiri province.
In March 2002, the government caught and deported 63 Montagnards whom it claimed the UNHCR had secretly brought to Cambodia—a claim the UNHCR vehemently denied.
A month later, two UN refugee camps were closed and more than 900 Montagnards were transported to Phnom Penh, where they were processed for resettlement in the US. Since then, government policy has been to define Montagnards as illegal immigrants and deport them.
The latest Interior Ministry allegations against the UN body alleged that the refugee agency secretly transferred 46 Montagnards over the past two years from border areas to Phnom Penh and gave them certified letters that grant them refugee status.
The government accused the refugee office of transferring 16 Montagnards from Ratanakkiri to its safe house in Phnom Penh’s Tuol Kok district on Feb 22, according to the document.
The Interior Ministry notice accused the UNHCR of linking with the human rights group Adhoc and the Christian and Missionary Alliance, known as CAMA, “to attract more Vietnamese Montagnards to filter into Cambodia and accompany them to stay in a temporary camp of the UNHCR in Phnom Penh.”
“The UNHCR is forming its own authority and violating the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Cambodia,” the aide memoire added.
Human rights groups, which met Tuesday to discuss the aide memoire, denied the government’s accusations on Thursday and lauded the UNHCR.
“We are not interested in the letters because what we have done is legal,” said Ny Chakrya, an Adhoc investigator.
“We are not hiding people and we are not doing human trafficking,” he said.
CAMA also denied secretly bringing Montagnards from the border to the capital.
“We have not had contact [with] anyone up in those border areas for about a year,” Steve Westergen, CAMA’s acting director, said Thursday.
One human rights worker, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that groups supported the UNHCR’s work here and called on the government to honor its commitments to protect refugees under the 1954 Refugee Convention.
“I don’t understand why the government is accusing UNHCR,” the rights worker said. “This is the role of UNHCR—to take care of political refugees.”
