New Evidence of Torture,
Mass Arrests of Montagnards
Cambodia
Slams Door on New Asylum Seekers
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Cambodia’s decision to close its northeastern border with
Vietnam to halt the flow of Montagnard asylum seekers comes amidst alarming
new reports of mass arrests, torture, and increasing persecution of
Montagnard Christians in Vietnam's Central Highlands, Human Rights Watch
said in a 25-page briefing paper released today.
New testimony gathered by Human Rights Watch establishes the widespread and
continued use of torture against activists, religious leaders, and
individuals who have been deported or have voluntarily returned from
Cambodia.
On January 1, Cambodian National Police Chief Hok Lundy ordered authorities
in the border province of Ratanakiri to increase the number of border police
in order to prevent Montagnard asylum seekers from entering. "The
authorities have to convince the local people to be our spies in order to
report how many Montagnards [enter Cambodia], to arrest them and send them
back to Vietnam," he said.
"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."
Human Rights Watch said that under Cambodia's international treaty
obligations, the Cambodian government must not return Montagnard asylum
seekers so long as they face a serious risk of persecution upon return to
Vietnam. Hok Lundy's statements, which were tape recorded, make it clear
that Cambodia is flouting its legal obligations.
During high-profile tours to the Central Highlands in December, top
Vietnamese officials pledged to respect religious freedom and called on
local officials to encourage "peaceful and happy" Christmas celebrations in
Montagnard villages.
However, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, police were busy rounding up
and arresting dozens of Montagnard Christians and detaining them at district
and provincial police stations and prisons throughout the region. In Gia Lai
province alone––one of five provinces in the Central Highlands––police
arrested 129 people between December 12 and 24.
"Christmas was relatively quiet in the highlands," said Adams. "That's
because hundreds of Montagnards were rounded up and spent the holiday in
police detention."
Many of those arrested during the Christmas crackdown were Montagnard house
church leaders who were organizing Christmas gatherings in the villages.
Others targeted for detention included the wives and even young children of
men who had fled to Cambodia to seek asylum. Human Rights Watch said that
police also arrested dozens of Montagnards suspected of being protest
leaders or making contact with groups in the U.S. supporting demands for the
return of ancestral land and religious freedom. The current whereabouts and
treatment of most of the detainees is unknown.
A Mnong man from Dak Nong province, who was arrested in April 2004, said he
was severely beaten several times by police officers trying to obtain the
names of other activists. At the district jail, police officers pulled out
one of his toe nails, beat him repeatedly on his thighs with a rubber baton,
and boxed him in the face, knocking out one of his front teeth. They
brandished an AK-47 rifle and threatened to kill him. He was then
transferred to the provincial prison, where he was interrogated and beaten
again:
They beat my head and used two hands to box my ears more than thirty times,
until my face was bright red and my ears were bleeding. They kicked me in
the chest with their boots. They wanted to squeeze out the information about
the demonstrations.
First-hand accounts from Montagnards who have voluntarily returned to
Vietnam since 2001 indicate that Vietnamese authorities treat returnees with
intense suspicion. Some are placed under police surveillance and even house
arrest upon return, or are regularly summoned to the police station for
questioning about their activities.
On December 29, the Vietnamese government publicly accused 13 Montagnards
who voluntarily returned to Vietnam last October from a Cambodian refugee
camp of being spies that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
"trained to create disturbances and then sent back to Vietnam."
"These kinds of statements show a degree of paranoia that leads to
persecution," said Adams. "Instead of punishing those who flee for safety,
the government in Hanoi must begin to deal with the causes of discontent,
which are religious repression and widespread confiscation of the
agricultural land on which the indigenous minority people depend for their
livelihood."
Meanwhile, Montagnard asylum seekers who crossed the border to Cambodia's
Ratanakiri province right before Christmas remain in dire straits. During
the last week truckloads of Cambodian police and gendarmerie have been
scouring the forests where the asylum seekers are thought to be hiding.
"It is absolutely imperative that the Cambodian government immediately
grants UNHCR access to these people, or turns them over to UNHCR if
government security forces apprehend them," said Adams. "UNHCR and key
governments must make it clear in no uncertain terms to the Cambodian
government that asylum seekers must not be arrested and summarily returned
to Vietnam."
Cambodia is a party to the United Nations Refugee Convention, which
prohibits the return of individuals facing a well-founded fear of
persecution on political, religious, or ethnic grounds. Cambodia has an
obligation to make individual determinations about the validity of asylum
claims. Cambodia is also a party to the Convention Against Torture, which
states in article 3 that, "No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler")
or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds
for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture."
