First Vietnamese refugees return home

The protests were about land and religion

By Clare Arthurs BBC reporter in Vietnam's central highlands

The United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, is supervising the return of 15 men from Cambodia to their homes in Vietnam's Central Highlands.

They were among about 1,000 people who fled to Cambodia following protests a year ago in the highlands over access to land and religious freedom.

The Vietnamese authorities are anxious to have the people they call illegal migrants return to their highland families, saying they will be given food and other help to restart their lives.

But human-rights groups and the United States have criticised the returns, blaming the UNHCR for rushing.

About half of the region's population belong to ethnic minorities. Many of them are Protestants.

Human rights groups say the Montagnard people are subject to systematic abuse, but local officials deny this and point to a range of programmes to alleviate poverty and preserve ethnic traditions in the area.

As the first 15 returnees travel to the province of Kon Tum, I spoke to villagers in the neighbouring province of Gia Lai.

Last year, eight people from the village of Bong Phun fled to Cambodia. One of them was the husband of Ploi and the father of their two children.

Fear

She speaks nervously at the door of her house, a tin shed with a concrete floor and chickens sleeping in a dark corner.

She says the family is Protestant and had taken part in last year's demonstrations. She does not explain the protests, saying simply that she and her husband, Y Deh, followed the crowd.

Vietnam says it wants to preserve ethnic traditions

Afterwards, Y Deh fled the village several times, finally leaving last November after local officials put pressure on him.

Ploi says although the family does not have enough food, she does not want her husband to return, saying she is afraid for him.

Somebody who has returned from Cambodia lives in the neighbouring village of Do. B Lun is aged in his early 20s, one of six children and a Protestant who goes regularly to church.

But he says he practices his religion in fear. Protestants in this province have no authorised churches and worship in their homes, gatherings which may or may not be seen by the authorities as illegal.

Beaten

B Lun says he fled his village last year for the Cambodian border because he did not have enough to eat. He spent a month in the jungle with his brothers until Vietnamese border guards caught them and returned them to their village.

B Lun says he was beaten by the guards. Asked what the authorities did to him when he returned to his family, he says he was beaten again.

He now lives with his family and is again attending weekly religious services, but says he continues to be afraid.

Asked what he thinks might happen to people returning to Kon Tum, he says they can expect to be taken to meet local government authorities.