Vietnam has launched a new crackdown in the Central Highlands, arresting at least 30 Montagnard church leaders, land rights activists and villagers suspected of guiding asylum seekers to Cambodia, the Human Rights Watch organization said on Friday.
More than 1,000 Montagnard refugees fled from Vietnam to Cambodia last year after Hanoi sent troops to crush demonstrations for ethnic-minority land rights and religious freedoms in the Central Highlands.
The fresh wave of oppression began in June with the arrest of 11 Montagnards and the subsequent arrests of over 20 more minority members in two police round-ups in August and September.
The whereabouts of most of those arrested is unknown; telephone lines have been cut to the Central Highlands, which remains under strict security control since last year’s protests, Human Rights Watch said.
“There’s been no let-up in the persecution of the Montagnards,” the group’s Mike Jendrzejczyk said in a statement.
“We urge diplomats, journalists and aid groups to make urgent inquiries about the arrests with government officials in Hanoi, who should open up access to the Central Highlands to UN monitors and independent observers,” he said.
Dozens of police have been posted to villages in many districts of Gia Lai and Dak Lak provinces since Vietnamese state media reported the possibility of renewed Montagnard protests, according to the statement.
The latest crackdown has outlawed religious gatherings, cut electricity to some Christian homes and led to the confiscation of bibles—branded subversive literature aimed at destroying the government of Vietnam, Human Rights Watch said.
Interrogation and detention of land rights advocates and church workers have also been reported, while Montagnard land has been confiscated and villagers who resist have been bound, gagged and beaten, the group added.
Reports of Montagnard asylum seekers entering Cambodia ended abruptly earlier this year after Phnom Penh agreed to an offer from Washington to resettle some 906 refugees in the US.
Analysts said the borders were closed to the fleeing refugees to placate Hanoi, which had placed pressure on Phnom Penh to reject the US resettlement plan.
Ethnically and linguistically distinct from the majority Vietnamese population, the mainly Christian Montagnards have a long history of resisting communist Hanoi and fought alongside US special forces during the US war in Vietnam.
Around 122 Montagnards are still sheltered in Phnom Penh awaiting the results of resettlement applications by the US Immigration and Naturalization Services in Bangkok.
Hundreds of Montagnards are expected to protest against Hanoi outside the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington, DC, today, calling for stronger religious, political and cultural freedoms, according to a US-based Montagnard support group. Sister protests are also planned for Brussels, Buenos Aires, Madrid, Moscow, Ottawa, Paris and Pretoria.
More than 3,000 people, including European Parliamentarians, are expected to attend, according to the Web site of the Transnational Radical Party, which is represented in the European Parliament and has lobbied on behalf of the Montagnards in Vietnam.
