Vietnam criticised over hill tribe rights

Montagnards have become a minority in their homeland

By Clare Arthurs BBC Hanoi Correspondent

The international rights group, Human Rights Watch, has warned of continuing unrest in Vietnam's Central Highlands, accusing the country's communist authorities of persisting with policies that repress and discriminate against the region's ethnic minority people.

The report, released on Tuesday, details allegations of religious restriction, land disputes and violence against the hill tribe or Montagnard people.

Their grievances erupted into demonstrations in February last year which resulted in the authorities sending in troops.

The region has been largely sealed off to independent observers since then.

Human Rights Watch has urged the international community to press human rights issues through both expressions of concern and technical assistance.

Despite the lack of access to the Central Highlands, Human Rights Watch has compiled documents and testimonies which portray a situation of continuing concern. It says the state is committing rights violations ranging from restrictions on religious freedom and torture by police, to self-criticism ceremonies where goats blood is drunk.

The Vietnamese authorities have so far declined to respond to the report.

Coffee collapse

Past criticism over rights has prompted angry protests from the government about interference, and accusations that many of the problems in the highlands are fed by separatists based in the United States. Human Rights Watch says there is no evidence that overseas Vietnamese have advocated violence in the highlands.

Religion is being suppressed, said the report

The 200 page report sets out to explain the root causes of the ethnic unrest. It places much of the blame on the government policy of encouraging large-scale migration by majority Vietnamese Kinh people and minorities from the overcrowded northern provinces, onto the Montagnards' ancestral lands.

As the Montagnards have become a minority in their homeland, there have been increasing disputes over access to land and scarce resources, exacerbated by the losses traditional growers faced when the world coffee price dropped.

Border crossings

The unrest is also due to religious repression. Many of the Montagnards call themselves Dega protestants - a branch of Christianity which the authorities view as a separatist movement. The result is a range of strict rules including a ban on gatherings which forces church services underground.

Human Rights Watch says the communist government, prompted by a fear that national unity was threatened, violated human rights in suppressing last year's protests, and continues to do so.

Some of its information comes from interviews with Montagnards who fled the unrest and crossed the border into Cambodia, where almost 1,000 are currently applying for asylum in the US.

The rights group has predicted more refugee flows if Vietnam's polices are not changed. It has urged the communist authorities to end arbitrary detentions, improve the land law and uphold the right to freedom of association.

It says the international community, particularly Vietnam's Asian partners, should press for change and help with improving the legal system and poverty reduction.