Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Phnom Penh (Agenzia Fides) - Cambodia has asked hundreds of Vietnamese Christian refugees to return home. According to the UN, in August only 13 out of more than 200 "Montagnards" (as the indigenous people who inhabit the mountainous areas of central Vietnam are called), almost all of Protestant Christianreligion, obtained the status of "refugees", while all others were defined as "illegal immigrants", subject to forced repatriations.
According to Denise Coghlan, director of the Jesuit Refugee Service in Cambodia, "the UNHCR (the UN agency that deals with refugees) should condemn Cambodia for a serious violation of the Refugee Convention". After the ups and downs and the troubled path they suffered, "Cambodia should agree to register them", she said.
The Montagnards represent about forty different Aboriginal groups. The majority live in central Vietnam, many are in Cambodia, others in Laos. In 2001 and 2004, at least two thousand Montagnards from the highlands of central Vietnam migrated to Cambodia to escape the violence of Hanoi authorities. The Vietnamese government confiscated their lands because of the support that these tribes provided to US forces during the war. (PA) (Agenzia Fides 17/09/2015)
