Montagnards, UN finally meet

A group of eight Montagnard asylum seekers, hiding in Ratanakkiri’s Lumphat district since fleeing Vietnam in November, walked out of the jungle this morning to meet with UN officials sent to check on their condition, a rights group said.

The group, which has claimed religious persecution in their home country, has been playing a game of cat and mouse with local authorities for weeks.

“Among eight of them, one is a woman who knew that the UN team was travelling to get them. They ran out to ask help from the UN in Nonghay village,” said Chhay Thy, provincial coordinator for rights group Adhoc. “The Ministry of Interior’s police team came later and cooperated with the UN.”

Local authorities only yesterday stopped UNHCR and OHCHR officers, who have spent the past week in the area attempting to establish contact with the Montagnards, as they attempted to reach a group of ethnic Jarai villages in the area.

Ongoing resistance from authorities in the province has come despite what a UN statement yesterday termed “clear instruction by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior HE Sar Kheng to cooperate with the joint team”.

Even today, local authorities “still wanted to ban them from meeting the Montagnards,” Adhoc’s Thy said.

According to Thy, a second group of five Montagnards has been living in a location about 80 kilometres from today’s meeting in Lumphat.

The UN hopes to collect all 13 asylum seekers today before returning to Phnom Penh, he said.

UN representatives were not immediately available for comment.

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/montagnards-un-finally-meet