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Thirteen hill tribespeople known as “Montagnards” have left their jungle hideout in Cambodia and will apply for asylum after crossing from Vietnam to flee persecution, it was announced yesterday. |
The minority group had for more than seven weeks sought refuge in the jungle in Cambodia’s northeastern province of Rattanakiri, fearing arrest and deportation by authorities.
But after contact with rights groups and the UN, eight Montagnards including a woman emerged from their hideout early Saturday to meet a UN team.
The remaining five men from the group were later found in the forest by local officials who handed them over to the UN team, activists said. All 13 were being transported to the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh by the UN Sunday.
“The group will be registered by the government’s refugee department after they arrive in Phnom Penh,” said Vivian Tan, a spokeswoman for UNHCR in Bangkok, explaining the Montagnards will formally apply for refugee status in the capital.
“Montagnards” is a French term referring to the patchwork of mainly Christian ethnic minority groups who live in Vietnam’s mountainous Central Highlands region.
Many Montagnard groups practise forms of evangelical Protestantism, which puts them at odds with Vietnam’s communist rulers who tightly control religion.
“All 13 Vietnamese Montagnards are now safe from deportation” by local Cambodian authorities, Chhay Thi, of local rights group Adhoc, said.
Many of the group are suffering from illnesses including dengue fever and malaria after spending weeks camped in the malaria-ridden jungle, he added. The UN previously said local Cambodian authorities had denied them access to help the Montagnards, who are from the Jarai ethnic minority group.
On Saturday Cambodia’s interior ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak accused the UN body of violating the kingdom’s sovereignty by assisting the asylum-seekers, asserting it was Phnom Penh’s decision to determine whether the group are considered as refugees.
In 2001 Vietnamese troops crushed protests in the Central Highlands, prompting an exodus of Montagnards, and Hanoi routinely asks Cambodia to return those who flee.
In May 2011 thousands of Hmong people — one of the Montagnard groups — gathered in Vietnam’s remote northwest apparently awaiting the arrival of a “messiah”.
The gathering was broken up by authorities in circumstances which remain unclear. Dozens of people have been jailed over the incident, which Vietnam has cast as a separatist plot to overthrow its communist government.
