One hundred seven Montagnard asylum seekers in Mondolkiri province who failed to get UN protection are illegal immigrants and face deportation back to Vietnam, Deputy Prime Minister Sar Kheng said Wednesday.
The Montagnards are part of a group of 322 camped outside the provincial capital of Sen Monorom, where officials with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees have spent months now interviewing and housing hill tribe members fled Vietnam’s Central Highlands who earlier this year.
More than half of those without UN protection come from a large group that arrived at the camp July 2, UNHCR officials said. While about 40 have left the camp, others remain, Abdi Osman, the UNHCR’s officer in charge in Phnom Penh, said.
“No one has been physically expelled from the camp,” Osman said Wednesday. But one human rights official familiar with the situation said those who were not granted person of concern status have been told that Cambodian authorities could remove them from the camp and encouraged them to leave.
It’s unclear what Cambodian authorities intend to do with those Montagnards without person of concern status. Provincial Deputy Police Chief Nhem Vannay said Wednesday he is still awaiting orders from Phnom Penh.
Sar Kheng said the government still needs to discuss a solution. “If these people are illegal, we will implement our immigration law,” he said.
Sar Kheng criticized the UNHCR for not making clear the status of camp inhabitants.
“It’s difficult for me to understand what UNHCR has done. If we had known this before, we would have sent them back [to Vietnam] a long time ago,” Sar Kheng said.
The Montagnards without person of concern status came to light late last week when about a dozen approached Mondolkiri province third Deputy Governor Nha Rang Chan asking for asylum in Cambodia because the UNHCR refused to give them protection. The UNHCR’s status determination process has come under fire for being too premature. US Ambassador Kent Wiedemann said Wednesday he has asked the UNHCR to suspend any more decisions on whether asylum seekers should have person of concern status until more information about the situation in the Central Highlands is available. The US has already resettled 38 Montagnards in the US state of North Carolina, where a large Montagnard community exists, and has kept a close watch on the situation in Cambodia.
“We know they are persecuted in Vietnam, but we are not in a position to know to what extent, and nor is the UNHCR,” Wiedemann said.
But Osman said the screening—a procedure the UNHCR carries out in refugee situations worldwide—will continue.
Sar Kheng’s comments that at least some of the Montagnards could be deported came on the eve of the UNHCR’s talks with Cambodian and Vietnamese authorities in Hanoi, which began today. As the influx of Montagnards began earlier this year, Vietnam demanded that they be returned immediately. About 100 were forcibly deported before the UNHCR stepped in.
The UNHCR hopes to negotiate a repatriation plan for all the Montagnards under its care in Cambodia. But a key component of that plan—and the one most likely to be opposed by Vietnam—is the UNHCR’s ability to get inside the Central Highlands to monitor the situation there.
After fleeing a February crackdown on hill tribes, Montagnards in Cambodia complained of religious rights abuses and land grabbing. They also said Vietnamese authorities implemented strict travel bans that kept many from even going to their fields to work. The human rights official said once back in the Central Highlands, any Montagnards deported from Cambodia “are immediately more subject to surveillance and pressure, particularly for any unexplained absence. When they come back, this will be used against them.”
Though Prime Minister Hun Sen agreed to allow the UNHCR access to the Montagnards, many Interior Ministry officials have long considered them illegal immigrants subject to Cambodia’s immigration laws.
