Foreign Ministry spokesman Koy Kuong.By: Sopheng Cheang, The Associated Press
Posted: 14th December 2010
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - The Cambodian government has informed the U.N. refugee agency it will shut a compound housing 62 Vietnamese refugees on New Year's Day and send them back to Vietnam, where they allegedly face repression.
The U.N. agency, which already has granted them refugee status, pleaded Tuesday for a little more time to decide how to resettle the group.
They are the last batch of asylum-seekers from a wave of 1,812 Vietnamese hill tribe people taken in by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees since 2006, said the agency's regional representative Jean-Noel Wetterwald. The agency has resettled 999 of them, mostly in the United States, and sent 751 of them home.
Cambodia is eager to close the refugee compound in Phnom Penh to deter any further arrivals of ethnic minorities from Vietnam's Central Highlands, who are collectively known as Montagnards. Many of them sided with the United States during the Vietnam War, attend Protestant churches not recognized in Vietnam and are generally distrusted by the communist government.
"If we don't tell them to close the site, the work of the UNHCR will be prolonged endlessly," Foreign Ministry spokesman Koy Kuong said. "We don't want the site to stay there forever."
The Foreign Ministry told the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in a letter obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press "it has decided to close down the site" on Jan. 1. The government will send the refugees back to the communist country "on a date to be notified in due course," said the letter, dated Nov. 29.
The U.N. agency said it understands the government does not want the refugees staying indefinitely in Cambodia, but hopes a little more time will be granted so resettlement can be arranged.
"We have asked the government to give us an extension of the deadline to try to see if we can find a solution," Wetterwald said in a telephone interview in Bangkok.
He said the closure would not affect the agency office in Cambodia, which opened in 1983.
Thousands of Montagnards have fled to Cambodia since 2001, when Vietnam's communist government cracked down on protests against land confiscation and restrictions on religious freedom.
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Associated Press Writer Jocelyn Gecker in Bangkok contributed to this report.
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - The Cambodian government has informed the U.N. refugee agency it will shut a compound housing 62 Vietnamese refugees on New Year's Day and send them back to Vietnam, where they allegedly face repression.
The U.N. agency, which already has granted them refugee status, pleaded Tuesday for a little more time to decide how to resettle the group.
They are the last batch of asylum-seekers from a wave of 1,812 Vietnamese hill tribe people taken in by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees since 2006, said the agency's regional representative Jean-Noel Wetterwald. The agency has resettled 999 of them, mostly in the United States, and sent 751 of them home.
Cambodia is eager to close the refugee compound in Phnom Penh to deter any further arrivals of ethnic minorities from Vietnam's Central Highlands, who are collectively known as Montagnards. Many of them sided with the United States during the Vietnam War, attend Protestant churches not recognized in Vietnam and are generally distrusted by the communist government.
"If we don't tell them to close the site, the work of the UNHCR will be prolonged endlessly," Foreign Ministry spokesman Koy Kuong said. "We don't want the site to stay there forever."
The Foreign Ministry told the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in a letter obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press "it has decided to close down the site" on Jan. 1. The government will send the refugees back to the communist country "on a date to be notified in due course," said the letter, dated Nov. 29.
The U.N. agency said it understands the government does not want the refugees staying indefinitely in Cambodia, but hopes a little more time will be granted so resettlement can be arranged.
"We have asked the government to give us an extension of the deadline to try to see if we can find a solution," Wetterwald said in a telephone interview in Bangkok.
He said the closure would not affect the agency office in Cambodia, which opened in 1983.
Thousands of Montagnards have fled to Cambodia since 2001, when Vietnam's communist government cracked down on protests against land confiscation and restrictions on religious freedom.
___
Associated Press Writer Jocelyn Gecker in Bangkok contributed to this report.
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