Vietnam says hill people want to return from Cambodia
HANOI - Vietnam said on Sunday delays in repatriating hill
people who fled to neighbouring Cambodia were against the
interests of those wanting to return home, and represented
irresponsible interference from the United States.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) delayed the planned repatriation of 109 hill
people this weekend after the United States said protection
was inadequate for the returnees, who fled unrest in Vietnam
last year.
Human rights activists backed the delay to what they said was a "hasty and ill-conceived"
repatriation plan and called on the U.N. to ensure an ongoing presence in Vietnam's
Central Highlands to monitor returnees.
But Vietnam Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh said the United States
was "unconstructive and irresponsible" in blocking the repatriation programme, agreed
last month between Hanoi, Cambodia and the UNHCR .
"Such inhumanitarian actions run counter to the aspirations of those who are living in
difficult conditions, many falling ill, in camps in Cambodia, and who want to return soon,"
she said in a statement on the official Vietnam News Agency.
The weekend repatriation would have been the first of 1,084 hill people who fled
Vietnam after a crackdown on ethnic protests in the highlands last February.
"Brutal interference"
"This can only be understood as a brutal interference in the implementation of the
tripartite agreement, an imposition of pressure onto the UNHCR, and a deliberate
prevention of the process of repatriation," Thanh said.
Despite Vietnam's comments, aid workers in Cambodia say most hill people in camps
there do not want to return.
Last year's protests over land rights and religious freedom rattled Vietnam's communist
government, which cut access to the region and sent in police and soldiers to curb new
unrest.
More than 20 hill people were jailed for organising the protests and last month four more
for organising departures, raising doubts about Hanoi's pledges that returnees, who it
says left illegally, will not be victimised.
Thirty-eight of the first who fled to Cambodia were resettled in the United States, greatly
angering Hanoi, which blames the unrest on incitement by U.S.-based exiles.
Tribespeople in the region have long been viewed with suspicion by the communist
government because of their Christian faith and allegiance to U.S. forces in the Vietnam
War.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said it had documented 500 forcible
repatriations of hill people to Vietnam in the past 11 months and said UNHCR had spent
too little time in the highlands to establish that there had been a fundamental or durable
improvement in the human rights situation there.
"This hasty, ill-conceived operation is not in the best interests of the returnees and offers
no guarantees of protection on return," it said in a statement.
"The signing of the tripartite agreement does not mean that UNHCR can cut corners on
its protection mandate for asylum seekers or rush them into making important decisions
as to whether to return home."
Vietnam has organised a visit to the Central Highlands by foreign journalists starting on
Monday, the first permitted to the region since a highly organised tour in March last year.
By David Brunnstrom - Reuters - February 17, 2002.
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