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22/06/2006 | Written statement on Indigenous issues.

Written statement submitted by the Transnational Radical Party (TRP), a non-governmental organization in general consultative status Title: Indigenous issues The repression of indigenous peoples rights has taken different forms, but there are common practices that have hit all of them. The Governments of Vietnam and Laos have never recognized indigenous rights to the the Montagnards, the Khmer Krom and the Hmong peoples. These people's ancestral land belongs to the State and it is managed by the authorities regardless of the traditions and prerogatives of the peoples that have inhabited them for thousands of years. Confiscation of land of indigenous peoples is a common practice as is the State supported settlement - especially of Vietnamese people in such territories - which have resulted in the aggravation of the dire economic and social conditions of non-ethnic Vietnamese citizens. UN Organs have been very critical of these policies, in fact, on 15 August 2001, CERD confirmed expressed its concern "about the alleged [Vietnamese] population transfer to territories inhabited by indigenous groups, disadvantaging them in the exercise of their social, economic and cultural rights.” The Vietnamese and Laotian authorities strictly control the practice of religion; they do not allow religious activities to be carried out independently from State controlled institutions. This holds true for all religious confessions, be they Christian, – Catholic or Protestant – Buddhist, Cao Dai and others. Vietnam and Laos are governed by a one party political system lead by the Communist Party, which forbids the enjoyment of all civil and political freedoms for all citizens, including indigenous peoples. The lack of democracy in Vietnam and Laos and the systematic repression of dissent have lead to arrests, executions, torture and widespread human rights violations. The different ethnic, cultural and social customs as well as in some cases religious practices of the indigenous peoples have led Vietnamese and Laotian authorities to apply brutal and repressive policies against them. As regards the indigenous Montagnard people, as documented by several reports of independent NGOs and the UN Human Rights Committee in 2002, the ancestral inhabitants of Vietnam's Central Highlands have suffered decades of persecution and discrimination by the Hanoi. Vietnam is included by the US State Department among the “Countries of Particular Concern” for 2005 for its violations of religious freedoms. This decision was taken also to denounce the well-documented practice of the Vietnamese authorities to force Montagnard Christian believers to join the State-sponsored churches or to renounce in public their faith. Moreover, Montagnard asylum seekers have been refouled to Vietnam from Cambodia and persecuted by Vietnamese authorities on their return, in blatant violation of the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. In April 2004, over the Easter weekend, the Vietnamese authorities carried out a crackdown on Montagnard peaceful demonstrators in the Central Highlands, which resulted in killings. Although the US State Department has estimated in “double digits” the deaths, the incident has never been fully investigated as the access of independent monitors to the Central Highlands remains impeded. Despite the fact that the 2002 Concluding Observations of the United Nations Human Rights Committee called on the Vietnamese authorities to allow international monitors to have access to the region the Vietnamese Government has not opened the region to human rights defenders. On the basis of information gathered directly from Vietnam under very difficult circumstances, the Montagnard Foundation inc. has reported that over 300 Montagnard prisoners of conscience remain in prison today and that access to them is almost impossible. Most of the prisoners have been convicted because they took part in the social movement that claims the respect of land rights and religious freedom in the Central Highlands. This systematic repression and the implementation of discriminatory policies against the Montagnards in regards to their culture and rights to ancestral lands is not a new phenomenon, as the UNDP reported in 1997 the “Fixed Field/Fixed Residence” policy of the Vietnamese government has “not always been favorable for the ethnic people mainly because of the limits on land allocations and land use but also because the planners have ignored the realities of the ethnic minority household economy and the great variety of its farming systems. The UNDP report further stated, “The resettlement of ethnic people often disrupted their social organization and their traditional farming systems”. As regards the situation of the Khmer Krom people, the organization Kampuchea Krom Federation has reported that the Khmer Krom, after having endured immense human rights violations, and after having been subject to ethnic, religious, and cultural discrimination and grievous oppression today remain too terrorized to denounce their sufferings. Efforts to use national remedies against human rights violations have only resulted in increased oppression and retaliations which have been documented in the report, “Vietnam: The Silencing of Dissent,” by Human Rights Watch released on 1 May 2000. On the issue of religious freedom Mr. Abdelfatth Amor, the Special Rapporteur of the UNCHR on Freedom of Religion or Belief, in his 1998 report to the UNCHR stated: “The Special Rapporteur went to the place where a private meeting was to take place with representatives of the Khmers Krom, but the people he interviewed were unable to communicate any information whatsoever. After the visit, non-governmental sources indicated that the Khmers Krom representatives' failure to make statements had apparently been due to pressure from the security services.” Similarly, the 2002 Concluding Observations of the UN Human Rights Committee noted that Viet Nam had provided insufficient information for the Committee “to have a clear view of the situation in Viet Nam with regard to religious freedom. In the light of information available to the Committee that certain religious practices are repressed or strongly discouraged in Viet Nam, the Committee is seriously concerned that the State party’s practice in this respect does not meet the requirements of article 18 of the Covenant. (…) In this context, the Committee is concerned at the restrictions placed on outside observers who wished to investigate the allegations.” On January 24, 2003, a Vietnamese local newspaper reported that in many peasant areas inhabited by Khmer-Krom in the province of Polleav (Bac Lieu), such as the district of Vinh Chau, about 3000 Khmer-Krom people were afflicted with blindness. The report stated that 98.7% of this blindness was caused by water pollution possibly involving residues of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers used by the Vietnamese authorities. Since 2003, the epidemic of blindness has spread throughout Kleang (Soc Trang) My Tu, My Xuyen, and Preah Trapeang (Tra Vinh) Provinces. Vietnamese authorities, however, have failed to address the problem by making no serious effort to find the causes and remedies of the phenomenon. Currently there are over 100 Khmer-Krom asylum seekers in Cambodia seeking the refugee status, unfortunately their requests have all been turned down by UNHCR, which in replying to a request of explanation for such a decision stated on 15 September 2005 that its competence "does not extend to persons who are not in need of international refugee protection on the grounds that they are recognized by the competent authorities of the country in which they have taken residence as having the rights and obligations which are attached to the possession of the nationality of that country. It is our understanding that Khmer Krom individuals are treated as Cambodian citizens by the Cambodian Government, as foreseen in successive citizenship laws from 1954 to 1990. UNHCR is thus not in a position to extend its refugee mandate to individuals who are recognized as Cambodian nationals or who enjoy the rights and obligations which are attached to Cambodian nationality and are therefore within the scope of Article 1E of the 1951 Convention.” According to information and testimonies in possession of the TRP obtained directly from Cambodia, and available for interested UN officials and concerned Member States, Khmer Krom asylum seekers who fled Vietnam can obtain Cambodian citizenship if and only if they consent to change their name adopting a Cambodian one and their place of birth from Vietnam to Cambodia. It is interesting to note that in a time when national and international security are considered of such a paramount importance that the right to privacy can be put aside, there is a country that awards citizenship inciting the falsification of personal data. With regards to the Hmong indigenous people living in Laos, according to a report by the Hmong International Human Rights Watch the Laotian Government is still pursuing a policy of harsh repression and persecution of the Hmong people. Moreover, a group of Hmong asylum seekers currently in Phetchabun, Thailand, claims to be there trying to escape the persecution of the Laotian government. over the last three decades systematic campaigns of persecution have taken place in Laos and thousands of Hmong families have been forced to hide in the jungle or cross the boarder. Some of these Hmongs, who are not engaged in any political or violent activities against the Lao PDR Government regime, have often denounced severe persecutions carried out by the Laotian military. Some other Hmongs have stated that, prior to hiding in the jungle, they were monitored and intimidated, chased and injured, arbitrarily arrested and on different occasions tortured by the Laotian authorities. Testimonies gathered by the TRP document that, over the years and up to this date (February 2006), the Laotian authorities have searched for their hiding spots in the jungle via air surveillance, eventually sending ground troops to attack them also with the spraying of chemicals of a yellowish color. These chemicals are highly feared by all the people interviewed. Several have reported serious diarrhea, loss of teeth, stomach ache including swollen bellies, blindness as well as other physical problems. Moreover, the chemicals remain on plants and in the water prolonging the risks of maladies and infections. Despited the launch of negotiations in at least three occasions, when meetings were organized in good faith by the Hmong representatives with the governmental authorities, the Hmong representatives who attended the meetings were immediately arrested. The TRP has gathered accounts that stated that representatives were apparently shot dead directly at the meeting place. The survivors claim to have been severely tortured. Other representatives, who attended the meetings were imprisoned and are still missing to this date. The news of the above mentioned facts have urged people to live constantly on the move to escape the hunt of the Lao military, which in their pursuit of the fugitives have attacked them with the use of different types of weaponry. As a result of that, several persons, including young children, have suffered severe injuries, bullet holes, grenade splitters, missing body parts. Each individual claim was confirmed in various “in depths follow up interviews” with other members of the same hiding place group. On 29 November 2005, despite the clear threats to their personal security, 26 ethnic Hmong children were deported by the Thai police forces from Thailand to Laos, where they were handed over to Laotian authorities, while under the guard of a teacher that. The reasons for the deportations of the children lay in the fact that at least some of them belong to Hmong families active in the social movement that advocate for the respect of that group's indigenous rights. The 26 children were asylum seekers living in a refugee camp in the northeast of Thailand with their families under the protection of the local UNCHR office. Despite the documented deportation - also by the US State Department - by the local Thai police forces to Laos, Laotian authorities continue to deny that such a deportation took place, despite the fact that various independent groups, have confirmed the presence of the deportees in Laos. Lastly, the TRP urges the HRC to address the total lack of progress of the Commission on the Draft Declaration on Indigenous Peoples’ Rights. The TRP believes that the long-negotiated text, if adopted, could provide an instrument to finally address human rights violations currently suffered by more than 370 million indigenous peoples worldwide.

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