Rite and Reason: The plight of Vietnam's Montagnard people came to international attention last week when 17 of them were detained in Cambodia. Held with them was Irish journalist Kevin Doyle. He tells their story
When the first 160 hungry and exhausted Montagnards from Vietnam emerged from the Cambodian jungle in 2001 word reached them that Vietnamese troops had crossed the Cambodian frontier and were descending on the remote town where they were camped waiting for the United Nations.
Fleeing Vietnam they had hidden for weeks in Cambodia's rain-soaked jungles with little food or clean water, constantly fearing capture by both Vietnamese and Cambodian security forces.
Rather than run in panic to evade the reported advancing soldiers, the small legion of frightened men, women and young children assembled in small groups and knelt and prayed. In the darkness they could be heard praying for their Christian God to save them.
The Vietnamese troops never arrived. However, a small convoy of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) trucks eventually did and the group of 160 asylum-seekers went on to form, much to the ire of the Hanoi government and their close allies in Phnom Penh, the first Montagnard refugee camp in Cambodia.
The Montagnards, a French word for "mountain dwellers", are the indigenous ethnic minorities who inhabit the mountainous Central Highlands region of Vietnam and comprise more than a dozen tribes with their own languages and culture. They are culturally and ethnically distinct from the lowland Vietnamese who form the majority population of modern Vietnam.
Fiercely independent, Montagnard tribes fought alongside the French colonial administration against Ho Chi Minh's communist Vietminh in the 1940s and 1950s. Their loyalty was repaid with a level of political autonomy in their ancestral homelands until the French defeat at the battle of Dien Bien Phu and its withdrawal as a colonial power from then Indochina in 1954.
When the US entered the war in Vietnam in the 1960s, the Montagnards were sought out by the US Special Forces for their expertise in jungle warfare in the strategic Central Highlands, which formed a buffer zone between Vietnam's warring north and south. The US not only brought weapons and the aspiration of tribal independence, it also brought Christian preachers.
One of those first asylum-seekers was Y Bion, a soft-spoken man in his mid-30s and a member of the Jarai ethnic minority. He told of the retribution exacted by Hanoi against the Montagnards, many of whom had converted to a form of Protestantism, after its 1975 victory. Churches were closed, bibles confiscated and the Montagnards' religious ceremonies were mostly conducted in secret, if at all, said Bion, who was baptised secretly at night in 1988. Vast swathes of the highlands had been taken by the state and turned over to cash crops and lowland migrants, rendering the Montagnards landless and forcing them into further poverty, he said.
Bion fled to the Cambodian jungle with his family after he and tens of thousands of other Montagnards held peaceful demonstrations in the capital cities of the Central Highland provinces. The Vietnamese government crackdown on the protests was brutal, and the ensuing repression has been well documented by such groups as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
In the aftermath of the demonstrations, Phnom Penh was forced by international pressure to concede to the establishment of two UN refugee camps which eventually gave shelter to 1,000 Montagnard asylum-seekers from Vietnam.
Washington later agreed to resettle the asylum-seekers. To appease Hanoi, Phnom Penh moved quickly to close both camps - one was symbolically torched just minutes after the UN departed - and vowed that all Montagnards would from then on be treated as illegal immigrants and summarily deported back to Vietnam.
Over the Easter weekend this year, an estimated 10,000 Montagnards again took to the streets to protest for the return of their ancestral lands and freedom to practise their religion. Vietnamese security forces backed up by cudgel-wielding Vietnamese civilians crushed the demonstrations and mass arrests of Montagnards have since followed, according to human rights groups and asylum-seekers.
Cambodian security forces were prepared for the expected Montagnard influx after the Easter demonstrations. Human rights groups reported scores of asylum-seekers being deported by police, acts that were in flagrant breach of the Cambodian government's responsibilities as a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention.
The Cambodian government denied such activities were taking place and also branded as lies the first photographic evidence and published interviews in June of Montagnards appealing for UN intervention. They were languishing in dire conditions in Cambodia's remote rain-soaked, malarial jungles at the time. The UNHCR was barred from investigating the reports and the Cambodian Red Cross said it could not act unless asked to do so by the government.
But the weight of evidence emerging from the jungle from interviews and photographs: mothers and their infants, the young and elderly, in hiding with little food or water and hunted by the police and military, forced the government to allow the UN to investigate.
Since the UNHCR's arrival in Cambodia's north-eastern Ratanakkiri province in mid-July, 1998, Montagnard asylum-seekers have abandoned their jungle hiding places and have been granted UN protection. But Cambodia is still unwilling to anger Hanoi and the UNHCR has not been allowed to open an office on the Cambodian border. All the asylum-seekers are being airlifted to Phnom Penh.
Although the Cambodian government was forced to concede and allow the UN to assist the Montagnards, the sentiments of authorities was best revealed in the military detention of the last known group of asylum-seekers to leave the jungle.
The 11 frightened men and six women were held from Sunday night until Tuesday morning at a remote jungle military post as the top brass decided their fate. Detained also was a Cambodian human rights worker, who was escorting the group to UN care, and two journalists - myself included - covering the story.
As the detention dragged on, reports emerged that the government had accused the reporters and human rights worker of human trafficking for assisting illegal immigrants to cross the Cambodian border. The public outcry in Cambodia over the military's actions was unprecedented and the group was eventually freed, a little dishevelled but very relieved.
Since the Easter demonstrations the Vietnamese government has maintained that the Central Highlands are a bastion of peace, happiness and ethnic equality. It has blamed the UNHCR and other elements for luring Montagnards to leave their homes.
However, Montagnards interviewed in Cambodia tell of hundreds more asylum-seekers who are currently trying to cross the border from Vietnam. When asked why so many were fleeing their homes in Vietnam, they said they would rather perish in the jungles of Cambodia than remain in Vietnam without religious freedom, cultural autonomy and land rights.
"It is better to die here than in Vietnam," said an asylum-seeker while in hiding last month in the Cambodian jungle.
Kevin Doyle is editor in chief at the Cambodia Daily