Mr. Chairman,

I speak on behalf of the Transnational Radical Party on the situation of the indigenous hill tribes that live in Viet Nam's Central Highlands also know as the Montagnards.

Ever since last summer, when Mr. Kok Ksor, President of the Montagnard Foundation Inc. - and TRP member - addressed this august body on the Vietnamese crackdown after the peaceful demonstration held in February 2001, the situation of the indigenous Montagnards has not changed. In fact, the authorities of Hanoi have sent an increasing number of troops and security forces into the Central Highlands.

After the providential agreement between the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the United States to resettle the Montagnard refugees in the U.S. (an agreement that has allowed several hundreds Montagnards to expatriate in the Carolinas), Cambodia and Viet Nam have deployed their troops and security forces to patrol and secure the border they share. The TRP fears that the life of hundreds, if not thousands, of Montagnards trying to cross that border to escape a real persecution might have been put at risk of mistreatments if not death.

These are, of course, serious allegations on which we can only speculate on the basis of fragmentary information we receive from the region, but that we are not in a position to confirm or deny due to the prohibition by Vietnamese forces to visit the Central Highlands to monitor the overall situation and gather independent data on the current status of the martial law, imposed on the area ever since February 2001.

Mr. Chairman, with your permission, I would like to bring to the attention of the members of the Sub-Commission a few exemplary instances of the way in which the indigenous Montagnards are forced to live in their ancestral lands:

on April 26, 2002, 26 Degars - including Mr. Ksor's niece - crossed the border into Cambodia where the Cambodian police arrested, beat them severely and handed them over back to Vietnamese officials, in patent violation of the 1951 Convention on Refugees. We have reason to believe that Vietnamese authorities mistreated the group in a violent fashion. A case for all: an 18 year-old woman, whose name is H'Ngon, was taken to an unknown location where she was repeatedly raped for three consecutive days. We might foresee that a similar fate might have awaited others, whose stories we have not been able to gather, yet.

As said, the Government of Hanoi has increased the numbers of troops and security forces that have been assigned to each Montagnard village in the Central Highlands, the reason for this escalation is to watch and control the activities of all the villagers. We have reports that the Vietnamese authorities have arrested, tortured and imprisoned anyone suspected of carrying telephones in order to prevent them from sending the information out of the country.

The following are the two most recent cases:

On July 12, 2002, Mr. Bum, from the hamlet of Plei Djrong, district of Dak Doa, Gia Lai province, was arrested by three policemen, Tuan, Binh and Hung, who took him away. The reason for that mistreatment was his involment in the peaceful demonstrations held in February 2001. His family has been looking for him ever since everywhere. Mr. Bum’s whereabouts remain unknown.

On July 18, 2002, two policemen from the province arrested 6 Montagnards of the Degar tribe, Chinh, Der, Alik, Blich, Ki and Binh, from the hamlet of Plei Breng 1, district of Ia Grai, province of Gia Lai, because of being suspected of carrying cell phones. They were all beaten and shocked by electric currents in a severe manner.

In conclusion, the Transnational Radical Party is very concerned at the lack of access to the region, and is worried that the tacit approval by the international community of the seclusion of the Central Highlands by Cambodia and Viet Nam might send the wrong message to those governments vis à vis the respect of indigenous and fundamental human rights of hundreds of thousands of hill tribesmen and women living in the region.

Mr. Chairman, last August, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in its final remarks invited the Government of Viet Nam, a multi ethnic society, to improve its treatment of the indigenous groups living in the south. More recently the UN Human Rights Committee voiced its concerns on the living conditions of the Montaganrds in Viet Nam inviting the country to allow access to the Central Highlands. Unfortunately, in both cases, those preoccupations have not been met by concrete actions by the concerned governmental authorities.

Therefore, the Transnational Radical Party urges the Sub-Commission to call, once again, on the governments of Cambodia and Viet Nam to reopen their border in compliance with the 1951 Convention on Refugees, and to allow UNHCR personnel, human rights independent observers, humanitarian organizations as well as independent journalist, to visit the Central Highlands in order to monitor and report transparently on the situation of the Montagnard people. Moreover, we urge the Sub-Commission to associate itself with the concerns of the CERD and the UNHRC calling on Viet Nam to respect its own Constitution, allowing the indigenous Montagnard to live in peace in their ancestral lands and to carry out a life of full-fledged citizens, in compliance with the norms contained in the international human rights instruments ratified by the Government of Hanoi.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman