Montagnards attend a church service in Bang Yai, Thailand, in an undated photo. |
Cambodia to Repatriate Montagnard Asylum Seekers to Vietnam
RFA | 18 April 2017
Cambodian
immigration officials will repatriate 26 Montagnard asylum seekers to Vietnam
this weekend to comply with a request by the United Nations refugee agency, the
head of the Interior Ministry’s refugee department said Tuesday.
Tan
Sovichea said that the Montagnards who failed to obtain refugee status from the
United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) are voluntarily returning to their
homeland.
“The
government isn’t deporting them because they have volunteered to return with
the UNHCR’s cooperation,” he told RFA’s Khmer Service.
Before
sending the Montagnards back to Vietnam, Tan Sovichea said immigration
authorities took a husband and his wife to two separate facilities to prevent
them from escaping to Thailand where many Montagnards have sought refuge.
“We
aren’t stopping them, but we just took them to separate locations so they
cannot contact each other because they are among the group of Montagnards who
have volunteered to be repatriated to Vietnam,” he said.
About 91
Montagnards are living temporary residencies in the capital Phnom Penh, while
50 others have already escaped to Thailand.
Vivian
Tan, senior regional public information officer at the UNHCR, told RFA via
email that some asylum seekers have been detained, though the refugee agency
does not support the move. She said the UNHCR is working with the Cambodian
government for their release.
Tan also
said she has yet to learn about the exact number of Montagnards who will be
repatriated to Vietnam.
A
Montagnard representative based in Thailand said the 26 Montagnards are not
happy about returning to Vietnam and are concerned that the Vietnamese
government will imprison them or restrict their religious, freedom and
political rights.
Dozens of
Montagnard asylum seekers, many of whom are Christian, have fled Cambodia to
Thailand in recent weeks amid fears of forced repatriation to Vietnam, where
they complain of discrimination and persecution at the hands of local
authorities, according to U.S.-based rights group Montagnards Assistance
Project.
Thailand
is not a signatory to the U.N.’s 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of
Refugees or its 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees and, as in
Cambodia, the Montagnards have no rights regardless of their registration with
the UNHCR.
No comments:
Post a Comment