More hilltribes people flee into Vietnam from Cambodia
PHNOM PENH - U.N. officials have found more hilltribes people who have fled into Cambodia from Vietnam
and are trying to resolve their future with the Cambodian government, a senior U.N. official said Saturday.
John Farvolden, the acting director of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees office in Cambodia, declined to reveal how many
people were found in hiding, but the English-language Cambodia Daily visited the area and reported Friday the number was at
least 137. Farvolden said he could neither confirm nor deny the reported figure.
Flights of refugees into Cambodia have been sparked by Hanoi's crackdown on tribal groups protesting alleged injustices by
government authorities.
Farvolden said a U.N. field team returned to Phnom Penh Friday after 10 days in the remote northeastern province of Mondulkiri
and will return to the border area "very soon."
At least 38 ethnic minority people from Vietnam were granted refugee status by the U.N. and accepted by the U.S. for
resettlement in the past six weeks.
The new, larger batch of asylum seekers could be returned to Vietnam, settled in camps in Cambodia, or granted passage to
Western countries willing to accept them. The Cambodian government has stated in recent weeks that any more asylum seekers
located in Cambodia would be handed over to the U.N. for interviews.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen's decision to allow the 38 refugees to be resettled infuriated Vietnam, which had publicly and
privately demanded their return. Hanoi maintains the people should have been regarded as illegal border crossers, and not as
political refugees.
But the refugees, from the Jarai, Radhe and Pnong tribes, said they fled a crackdown by Vietnamese authorities following rare
protests about land and religious issues. They also said they feared persecution if they returned to Vietnam.
Lt. Col. Chin Sarun, the deputy police commissioner for Mondulkiri, said Saturday by telephone that U.N. staff had informed him
the newly located border-crossers were under U.N. protection and carried documents saying so.
Chin Sarun said he dispatched police officers Saturday to Pech Chreada district where he believed the potential asylum seekers
were huddling. He also said he sent search teams out Thursday and Friday to confirm their existence but that his men hadn't
located the people.
The Associated Press - May 5, 2001.
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