More ethnic people flee Vietnam to Cambodia
HANOI - Vietnam's official media said on Wednesday
that a group of 81 ethnic minority people crossed illegally into
Cambodia at the weekend after incitement by "bad elements" directed by exiles in the
United States.
The departures on Sunday came just three days after the U.N. refugee agency made a
first visit to Vietnam's Central Highlands to prepare for the repatriation of more than
1,000 tribespeople who fled to Cambodia from crackdowns on ethnic protests last year.
The official Vietnam News Agency said the people from the Ede, Gia Rai and M'nong
tribes crossed the border from Daklak province into Cambodia's Mondulkiri province.
"The illegal migrants, aged between 18 and 25, were incited by bad elements, who
abused security safeguards along the common border," VNA said.
It said "reactionary" forces in the United States had intensified their activities in recent
days by making telephone calls to incite ethnic minority people in the highlands, which
saw serious unrest over land and religious rights last year.
VNA said the U.S.-based agitators were from FULRO, or the United Front for the
Liberation of Oppressed Races, an anti-communist group that fought alongside U.S.
troops during the Vietnam War.
Hanoi has said FULRO is largely defunct but that remnants still operate through the
Montagnard Foundation, an exile group in South Carolina it blames for inciting last year's
unrest.
VNA said the latest group had fled hoping to be sent to a third country for education.
A foreign aid worker in Mondulkiri said as many as 80 tribespeople had been reported
missing from their villages in Vietnam, but had yet to show up at the U.N. refugee camp
in the Cambodian province.
"We are keeping our eyes and ears open," she said.
The camp in Mondulkiri's provincial capital Sen Monorom is home to 565 asylum
seekers from Vietnam. They are among the 1,000 targeted for repatriation but none has
yet signed up for the programme, the aid worker said.
"They are wary of the agreement. They want information and to know how the U.N. will
monitor them," she said.
Nikola Mihajlovic, chief liaison officer of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in
Phnom Penh, said 104 asylum seekers of a total 498 had signed up for repatriation in the
neighbouring province of Ratanakiri.
He said the meeting between the UNHCR and provincial officials in Vietnam last week
had been a "great success", with the Vietnamese side pledging full cooperation.
The aid worker in Mondulkiri said there had been an increase in the number of
Vietnamese agents working in the province to monitor the refugees and trying to entice
them to return.
Last year's calls for land rights and religious freedom rattled the authorities, who limited
access to the region and sent in police and soldiers to prevent new outbreaks.
Hilltribe communities in the coffee growing Central Highlands have long been suspected
by Hanoi because of their Christian faith and allegiance to U.S. forces during the Vietnam
War.
Reuters - February 06, 2002.
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