First Vietnamese Montagnards return from Cambodia under UN refugee accord
The first Montagnard people to be repatriated to Viet Nam from Cambodia under a new agreement with the United Nations refugee agency returned home today, launching an effort to find a solution for more than 700 Vietnamese who fled their country over the past year, claiming religious persecution and land disputes.
The first Montagnard people to be repatriated to Viet Nam from Cambodia under a new agreement with the United Nations refugee agency returned home today, launching an effort to find a solution for more than 700 Vietnamese who fled their country over the past year, claiming religious persecution and land disputes.
The agreement allows the 716 Montagnards under the care of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Cambodia to choose to resettle in a third country or return home. So far, 297 have chosen resettlement and 43 to return to Viet Nam's Central Highlands from where they fled.
Under the accord Viet Nam has given guarantees that the Montagnards returnees, who hold Christian beliefs, will not be punished, discriminated against or prosecuted.
The first group of nine Montagnards set out this morning from a refugee centre in Phnom Penh, the Cambodia capital, in a convoy that included representatives of UNHCR, Viet Nam and Cambodia for the three-hour trip to the Bavet-Moc Bai border crossing.
Apart from a 13-year-old boy the returnees, ranging in age from 21 to 33, were all married men who had left behind wives and children, the main reason for their wish to return. UNHCR is arranging the return of a second group of 16, followed by another batch of 18.