Asylum seeker family awaiting deportation
The asylum applications of all but three Montagnards in Phnom Penh have been rejected, though an appeal window remains open for the group, an official said yesterday, as the government prepares to repatriate at least four members of the ethnic minority back to Vietnam. Yesterday’s update on the situation of Montagnards remaining in the capital, where they arrived in 2014 and 2015 to seek protection, follows news this week that almost 50 of the asylum seekers fled from Cambodia to Thailand last month in a bid to avoid being sent back to their native home in Vietnam’s central highlands, where they have long complained of political and religious persecution. According to Grace Bui, a Bangkok-based volunteer for the US-based Montagnard Assistance Project, at least 22 of the group – who fled after the Interior Ministry began a mass round of rejections on March 20 – have arrived in the Thai capital, and seven are preparing to re-apply as asylum seekers with the United Nations.
