Vietnamese authorities have strengthened their forces in the Central Highlands to prevent Montagnard asylum-seekers from entering Cambodia, Ratanakirri provincial Governor Kham Khoeun said Tuesday.
“I don’t think the Montagnards can escape from the Vietnamese soldiers,” he said.
Kham Khoeun continued to deny reports that Montagnard asylum-seekers are hiding in Ratanakkiri, despite reports from hill tribe sources that more than 200 are now languishing in the jungle. A group of 21 Montagnard asylum seekers were photographed in Ratanakkiri’s thick, rain-soaked forests with little food, water and medicine on June 6.
“I have never seen any Montagnards,” the governor said. “That report is not true.”
No humanitarian assistance has reached the Montagnards, who requested aid and protection from the international community, Pen Bonnar, the Ratanakkiri director of the human rights group Adhoc, said Tuesday.
The Montagnards are facing food shortages, Pen Bonnar said.
The UN refugee agency, the only body authorized to determine asylum claims in Cambodia, has been barred from traveling to the border areas.
The Cambodian Red Cross, which met on June 9 to discuss providing the group of Montagnards mosquito nets, food and drinking water, still has not decided whether to take any action.
“The Red Cross has no plans yet to provide humanitarian assistance to the Montagnards,” Ouk Damry, the group’s acting president, said Tuesday.
On Friday, US Ambassador Charles Ray said a diplomatic visit to the border regions would not help protect the Montagnards. Diplomats from the US, Canada, Germany and Britain requested access to the border areas during a visit with co-Minister of Interior Sar Kheng late last month.
A representative from the US-based Human Rights Watch said Tuesday that any efforts by the diplomatic community to visit the northeast provinces would “not be a wasted effort.”
“This is not a matter of long- term diplomatic relations,” the representative said. “It’s a matter of life and death.”
