Vietnam hill tribe refugees depart
The first batch of more than 700 Vietnamese refugees arrive at
Pochentong airport in Phnom Penh, 03 June, 2002, on their
way to the US, ending a year of turmoil that began with a
Hanoi military crackdown.
PHNOM PENH - The first of more than 900 ethnic hill
tribe refugees from Vietnam departed Cambodia on Monday for
resettlement in the United States, the last stage of a yearlong quest
for freedom.
Fifty people from the hill tribes of Vietnam's Central Highlands left on a
commercial flight for Bangkok en route to Los Angeles.
Virtually all of them will eventually be resettled in four cities in North
Carolina, said Mohammad Alnassery, acting chief of mission in
Cambodia for the U.N.-affiliated International Organization for
Migration.
The refugees fled to Cambodia in February 2001 after Vietnamese
authorities crushed rare anti-government demonstrations last year in
the Central Highlands. Vietnam's hill tribe people, collectively known as Montagnards, claim they were stripped of their
farmland, persecuted for their Christian faith and faced systematic discrimination by Vietnamese authorities.
Vietnam has denied the allegations, claiming that ``outside forces'' were causing unrest in the highlands.
However, the New York-based group Human Rights Watch backed the allegations of abuse by the Montagnards, who
have been viewed with suspicion by Hanoi because of their role assisting the U.S. military against the communists in
the Vietnam war during the 1960s and early 1970s.
Three or four times a week until mid-July, groups of 50 Montagnards will board commercial flights out of Cambodia,
Alnassery said.
Most of them have relatives in the United States who will help them adapt from a simple, agrarian way of living to the
paved roads and shopping malls of suburban America, Alnassery said.
``They are quite eager to go to the U.S.,'' he said. ``From what I understand, most have established connections with
second cousins and relatives and that is encouraging to them.''
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen agreed to allow the asylum seekers to resettle in the United States after pressure
from Washington and human rights groups. But he closed the refugee camps and announced that any more
Montagnards found in Cambodia would be sent back to Vietnam as illegal border crossers.
Vietnam's Ambassador to Cambodia Nguyen Duy Hung acknowledged Monday that his government initially opposed the
resettlement but eventually agreed with Cambodia ``that this was a special case for resettlement and that the camps
would be closed and that there'd be no more refugees.''
Since moving from their camps near the border two months ago, the refugees have been living under the care of the
United Nations in an abandoned garment factory on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.
Six of the Montagnards will be resettled in the Seattle area where they have family. The rest will go to the North
Carolina cities of Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro and New Bern, said Carl Regan of the Save the Montagnard People
organization, which is assisting the refugees here.
About 3,000 Montagnards live in North Carolina.
The Associated Press - June 03, 2002.
|