By Julia Wallace
PHNOM PENH
A UN team was blocked by police Friday from meeting a group of 13 Vietnamese Montagnard asylum seekers hiding in remote forests in northeastern Cambodia, the UN said in a statement.
Issued by the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees and Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the statement appealed to the Cambodian government to “take urgent action” by offering protection to the Montagnards and ensuring they are able to travel to Phnom Penh safely to have their asylum claims assessed.
“This morning, provincial authorities have prevented UN access to the Jarai villages in the area,” the UN said. “In the meantime, UN officials were informed that provincial police have continued to search for the individuals, possibly with a view to returning them to Vietnam.”
The UN said there is reason to believe the Montagnards, a persecuted Christian minority, would be in danger if returned to Vietnam and that they are in an “extremely precarious” situation with many of them suffering from malaria or dengue fever.
Friday’s incident marks the second time this month that UN has been thwarted in its efforts to assist the asylum seekers, who are believed to have fled Vietnam in November.
Early this month, the UN sent representatives to meet the group but they were told by local authorities that they needed the permission of the Interior Ministry. The UN left, brokered a deal with the ministry that would allow them to assist the Montagnards and returned late last week.
“Despite a clear instruction by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sar Kheng to cooperate with the joint team, the local authorities in Ratanakiri have refused to allow the team to meet with the group or transport them to the capital,” the UN said.
A spokesman for the Interior Ministry could not be reached Friday. Soy Thay, police chief of Lumpat district in Ratanakiri, told The Anadolu Agency that his forces stopped the UN delegation because it did not have the proper permits.
“I asked them if they had any permits from the government or provincial government,” he explained. “They said they did, but I didn’t see it. If they had it, why wasn’t I informed? After that, I asked them to return. We didn’t detain them, we just stopped them.”
Chhay Thy, the Ratanakiri provincial coordinator for Adhoc, a local rights group, told AA that five officials, some wearing military uniforms and armed with AK-47 assault rifles, had stopped the UN delegation for nearly an hour.
He said local officials had been stalling and delaying the UN visitors for days in an effort to prevent them reaching the Montagnards, perhaps to avoid a diplomatic standoff with Vietnam, one of Cambodia’s key patrons.
In the past, Cambodia has struggled to withstand political pressure to return fleeing Montagnards to Vietnam.
“It seems like they don’t want to be involved in this Vietnamese ethnic issue because they don’t want the Vietnamese government to be unhappy,” Chhay Thy said.
Montagnards, a French term for ethnic minority groups living in Vietnam’s central highlands, have been crossing the Cambodian border in greater numbers since 2001, when protests for greater religious freedom and land rights led to a government crackdown and repression.
They were converted to Christianity by French and American missionaries during the colonial period. Also known as the Degar, many fought alongside the U.S. during the Vietnam War.
While hundreds have been resettled in third countries, many have also been deported by Cambodia back to Vietnam, where they can face severe prison sentences.
Shortly after the most recent group arrived, the Vietnamese government requested their arrest and deportation while the Cambodian Interior Ministry and local police have publicly referred to the asylum seekers as “illegal immigrants.”
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