Erin Handley | Publication date 06 April 2018 | 18:36 ICT
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A group of 29 Montagnards pose with signs reading “please help us” in September last year. They urged international groups to stop their deportation to Vietnam, where they fear they will face prison and persecution. Photo supplied
Montagnard refugees living in limbo in Phnom Penh worry the heightened police presence outside their home for the past two weeks could signal imminent deportation to Vietnam, where they fear they will face persecution.
Since around March 20, a regular police guard of one or two men often has swelled to eight or even 10 outside the Montagnards’ home in Cham Chao commune, refugee Y Rin Kpa said. He said about five stood guard on Friday.
“So many police of Cambodia came to guards us … about tens people and so many their cars. So we are very worry about that,” he said in a message. “We are very worry about deporting to Vietnam.”
The Cambodian government’s Refugee Department Director Tan Sovichea on Thursday deflected questions about increased police presence.
“Why do you want to know?” he asked, before hanging up.
Reached again on Friday, he once more declined to comment, saying: “Is it your business to know?”
Read More: ‘Well-founded fears’: Montagnards returning to Vietnam speak of dread for what awaits them
The government has repeatedly pledged to return the remaining 29 Montagnards – an ethnic, mostly Christian minority hailing from Vietnam’s Central Highlands – after rejecting their claims for refugee status last year.
The UN refugee agency, however, said they have well-founded fears of persecution and has urged Cambodia to send them to a safe third country, rather than breach the international law of non-refoulement.
UNHCR spokesman Keane Shum on Friday said the refugee agency was aware of the situation. “We understand the extra officers are still there, but are not aware of how long they will remain,” he said.
Grace Bui, of the Bangkok-based Montagnard Assistance Project, said Montagnards at the Phnom Penh site had also informed her that the area was being “heavily guarded” and that police had taken many photos at the site.
“The Montagnards were very scared so they stayed inside,” she said. “When the asylum seekers left the house, they had to sign out.”
Cham Chao Commune Police Chief Ros Sarady, however, denied any increase in police in the commune.
“There is no police training or immigration police doing anything in my area,” he said. “It's quiet.”
The news comes as Amnesty International released a list of Vietnam’s prisoners of conscience. Of the 97 featured on that list, many of whom face years in prison, almost a third are ethnic Montagnard Christians.
Six human rights activists on that list, although they are not Montagnards, were on Thursday convicted of attempting to overthrow the government in a high-profile trial. The US Department of State said it was “deeply troubled” by the case, which it said was part of a “disturbing trend of increased arrests, convictions, and harsh sentences of peaceful activists”.
Their case, for Kpa, was indicative of a worsening situation in Vietnam and emblematic of a crackdown on dissent.
Kpa himself has already served most of a 10-year sentence in Vietnamese prison for participating in a protest for religious freedom, before he fled across the border to Cambodia in June 2015.
Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network programme coordinator Evan Jones said that irrespective of the Montagnards in Phnom Penh being denied refugee status, “it remains blindingly clear that the entire group still have serious protection concerns and should not be forced to return to Vietnam”.
“If Amnesty's recent list of Prisoners of Conscience in Vietnam is anything to go by, there is a significant chance that many would be jailed soon after arriving,” he said in an email. He urged the government to allow the Montagnards to leave Cambodia in preparation for resettlement in a third country.
Additional reporting by Chhay Channyda
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