CAMBODIA-HUMAN RIGHTS: U.N. Envoy Calls for Vietnamese Rights

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 23 (IPS) - Cambodia must ensure that new decrees to limit immigration do not violate the human rights of the nation's Vietnamese minority, a U.N. envoy said here Wednesday.

Justice Michael Kirby, the special U.N. envoy to Cambodia, said Cambodian media had spread "completely false" information, exaggerating the number of Vietnamese refugees in the country and stoking nationalist sentiment against them.

Some media reports, he noted, estimated there were about four million Vietnamese in Cambodia, a nation of nine million. Kirby estimates there are between 160,000 and 220,000 ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia.

The envoy, authorised by the U.N. General Assembly to investigate human rights and rebuild Cambodia's long-shattered legal system, added that Cambodians fear their culture may be dominated by the more numerous neighbouring Vietnamese.

"Whatever their perspective, ethnic cleansing and removal of the Vietnamese is not acceptable," he argued. "Human rights are tested most when they are demanded by unpopular minorities."

In a report submitted to the U.N. General Assembly Tuesday, Kirby also says that the armed forces of the extremist Khmer Rouge rebels have been major culprits in demonising and attacking ethnic Vietnamese.

"The racist campaign of the (rebel) National Army of Democratic Kampuchea (NADK) directed against Vietnamese civilians in Cambodia is continuing unabated," the report notes, adding that attacks against minorities increased since early 1994.

But Kirby also worries about the attitude of the current monarchist government, which has passed decrees on minorities and immigration which he argued must conform to international human rights laws.

Kirby has noted that some Vietnamese boat people, including 5,000 stranded on the border between Vietnam and Cambodia at Chrey Thom, speak the Cambodian language, Khmer, fluently and deserve to be treated as Cambodians.

He urged the government to abandon its plan to determine who is a legitimate Cambodian by forcing residents to take 'dictation tests' -- a practice Kirby noted was abandoned in his native Australia earlier this century as discriminatory.

Despite the Vietnamese conflict and the continuing threat of the Khmer Rouge, the envoy added that Cambodia's general human rights situation was brightening.

© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service