Eight religious minority Montagnards have emerged from hiding in a remote Cambodian border area where they crossed from Vietnam to flee persecution, the UN Refugee Agency said yesterday.
The group sought refuge in the jungle in Cambodia’s northeastern Rattanakiri Province for more than seven weeks.
Fears had mounted for their health in the malaria-ridden area where they remained hidden — albeit in contact with rights groups and the UN — fearing arrest and deportation by Cambodian authorities.
A UN official and a local rights activist told reporters that eight Montagnards, including a woman, emerged from their hiding and were met by a UN team early yesterday.
Rights activists said another group of five remained in the jungle and were considering contacting the UN soon.
Montagnard is a French term referring to the patchwork of mainly Christian ethnic minority groups who live in Vietnam’s mountainous Central Highlands region.
Many Montagnard groups practice forms of evangelical Protestantism, which puts them at odds with Vietnam’s communist rulers, who tightly control religion.
Cambodian Ministry of the Interior spokesman Khieu Sopheak accused the UN of violating the kingdom’s sovereignty by rescuing the asylum seekers without Cambodian authorities.
The UN has said local Cambodian authorities had denied UN access to help the Montagnards, who were from the Jarai ethnic minority group and reportedly suffering from ailments, including dengue fever and malaria.
In 2001, Vietnamese troops crushed protests in the Central Highlands, prompting an exodus of Montagnards.
Vietnam routinely asks Cambodia to return Montagnards who flee.
In May 2011, thousands of Hmong people — one of the Montagnard groups — gathered in Vietnam’s remote northwest apparently awaiting the arrival of a “messiah.” The gathering was broken up by authorities under circumstances which remain unclear.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing