~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

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[Year 2002]

Rights group accuses Vietnam of stepping up repression of minority groups

HANOI - A human rights group has accused Vietnam's government of arresting at least 30 people in a new crackdown on ethnic minority groups in the country's Central Highlands. Human Rights Watch said the targets of the latest crackdown included Protestant church leaders, land rights advocates, and people suspected of having helped asylum seekers flee into neighboring Cambodia.

Dozens of people have gone into hiding, it said in a statement received in Hanoi on Saturday. Early last year, thousands of ethnic minority group members known as Montagnards protested in the Central Highlands over religious restrictions and their loss of ancestral lands to ethnic Vietnamese migrants. The protests were quickly suppressed by police and army troops, and more than a thousand Montagnards fled across the border into Cambodia. Many have now been resettled in the United States.

Since those protests, the area has been largely sealed off to foreign reporters. Earlier this month, local officials said scores of Montagnards were arrested to thwart plans for an anti-government protest on Sept. 2, communist Vietnam's National Day. Vietnam's state-controlled media have not reported the arrests, and the Foreign Ministry says they did not occur.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said between 10 and 30 police have been stationed since early August in each village in many areas of Gia Lai and Daklak provinces in the Central Highlands, often in the homes of church leaders. It said local authorities were forbidding many gatherings of villagers for worship, weddings or funerals.

"We urge diplomats, journalists, and aid groups to make urgent inquiries about the arrests with government officials in Hanoi, who should open up access to the Central Highlands to U.N. monitors and independent observers," Human Right Watch's Mike Jendrzejczyk said in the statement. Vietnam's ruling Communist Party says citizens enjoy religious freedom but it allows no independent organizations, and bans religious groups which do not accept its control. Many Montagnards are members of unauthorized Protestant "house churches."

The government remains highly distrustful of Montagnard groups because some seek autonomy to protect their traditional lifestyle, and some sided with American troops against communist forces during the Vietnam War.

The Associated Press - September 21, 2002.