Montagnard
Foundation website video describes confirms Human Rights Watch report of “New
Evidence of torture and mass arrests |
Website
Video Records Eyewitness Accounts of Refugees Testifying to Killings, Crucifixions,
Lethal Injections, Beatings and Being Forced to Renounce Christianity
BACKGROUND:
Hundreds of Montagnards have fled to Cambodia to escape ongoing persecution
by the inside Vietnamese Government. On April 10, 2004 tens of thousands of
Christian Montagnards conducted a peaceful prayer vigil inside Vietnam’s
Central Highlands calling for an end to this ongoing persecution. Vietnamese
security forces however, brutally attacked the demonstrators and Human Rights
Watch reported on 28 May 2004, “Hundreds of demonstrators were wounded
and many were killed on April 10 and 11 on key bridges and roadways”.
On 10 January
2005 Human Rights Watch stated "The Vietnamese government's mistreatment
of Montagnards continues unabated," said Brad Adams, executive director
of Human Rights Watch's Asia Division. "Instead of closing its borders
to asylum seekers, the Cambodian government should be working with the United
Nations refugee agency to provide sanctuary to people escaping torture and
arbitrary arrest."
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A form
of Crucifixion:
These Montagnards describe how Vietnamese authorities
chained him to a wall while forcing him to stand over nails in 2003.
click
icon for full video clip |
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Vietnamese police taunted him ”Where is your Jesus now?” |
Other excerpts include the following:
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A Montagnard Christian
demonstrated how he was arrested by police and tortured by repeated beatings
on May 22, 2003 for refusing to give up practicing Christianity.
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A Montagnard man describes
how his entire village was forced to renounce Christianity in an official
ceremony in 2003. Vietnamese police told him ”Not to believe in God
anymore” and that Christianity is an “American religion.”
He spent 17 months hiding in the jungle before United Nations refugee workers
found him in Cambodia in 2004.
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A Montagnard man describes
how Vietnamese police killed 5 or 6 Montagnard prisoners after the April 2004
demonstration by giving them lethal injections.
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A Montagnard man describes
how he witnessed seeing 35 to 40 Montagnards killed by police, lying dead
on Phan Chu Trinh street on 10 April 2004 in Banmathuot City. He als reported
that 280 Montagnards were admitted to hospital after being attacked by police.
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A Montagnard man was
arrested on June 7, 2004 and severely tortured by police. Fearing he was going
to die in captivity the police released him. He fled to Cambodia. Vietnamese
police. “They tortured and beat me” - “they burned my stomach
with cigarettes and lighters”.
The Montagnard
Foundation calls on:
-
The UNHCR and donor nations to
urgently protect the Montagnard Refugees in Cambodia and ensure they are not
forcibly deported against their will to Vietnam, and that Vietnam and Cambodia
abide by the UN Refugee Convention.
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The international community urge
Vietnam to abide by the 2002 Concluding Observations of the UN Human Rights
Committee regarding the “serious violations” facing the Montagnard
peoples (UN doc: CCPR/C/SR.2031) and that Vietnam allow human rights monitors
access to the central highlands.
“Unless
the international community protects our people and solves the problem inside
Vietnam many more of our people are going to suffer and die. We only want to
live as indigenous people in peace on our ancestral lands.” Kok Ksor
