Amnesty International says 8 killed in Vietnam's Central Highlands in clashes with authorities
HANOI - At least eight minority Christians were killed in clashes with Vietnamese authorities during protests in the country's Central Highlands earlier this month, Amnesty International said Thursday.
The London-based group said the eight included a blind woman who was killed during the April 10-11 demonstrations, in which thousands of ethnic minorities, collectively called Montagnards, took to the streets demanding religious freedoms and the return of tribal lands.
Many of the Montagnards are Christians who belong to Protestant churches banned by Vietnam's Communist government.
Vietnam has said two people were killed in the protests.
"Amnesty International fears that the final death toll is considerably higher and has further names of victims which are yet to be corroborated," the group said in a seven-page report that included the names of eight people.
The organization called on Vietnam to give independent observers "immediate and unfettered access" to the three provinces where the protests took place.
On Thursday, Vietnam angrily rejected the latest charges, saying the Amnesty assessment was "based on fabricated and ill-intentioned information." Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung said that authorities did not violently suppress demonstrators during Easter weekend.
"On the contrary, law enforcement agencies have practiced restraint at the extremists' actions, causing public disturbances using (primitive weapons) to inflict injuries on authorities and destroying public welfare projects," he said.
A delegation from the U.S. Embassy was permitted into the area this week along with a handful of foreign reporters who were closely monitored by government officials and not permitted to report freely.
Meanwhile, in neighboring Cambodia, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees office offered protection to a family of six Montagnards who arrived in Phnom Penh on Saturday, the first to arrive at the office following the unrest over the Easter weekend.
A human rights worker in Cambodia said Thursday that four Montagnards were deported after crossing the border in search of asylum, following reports in a Cambodian newspaper last week that 160 others were forced back into Vietnam.
The Associated Press - April 29, 2004.
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