The Vientiane opportunity

The Vientiane opportunity

Verghese Mathews
New Straits Times
Kuala Lumpur

ASEAN's 10th summit in Vientiane, Laos, is a good time to
address what is rapidly becoming a major problem for three
members of the grouping: The fate of the Montagnards in the
central highlands of Vietnam.

ASEAN has come a long way from the crestfallen days of the
Asian financial crisis when even its close allies and trading
partners seriously questioned its ability to get itself out of a
self-created quagmire. Some cynics even wrote ASEAN off as a
fading sunset grouping.

When ASEAN leaders meet in Vientiane this week such disquiet
is well behind them -- not because of the passage of time but
because member countries took bold and unpopular steps to redress
the situation in which they had found themselves.

The point to be made here is that when faced with a common
threat, one which they could not ignore, ASEAN members closed
ranks.

ASEAN leaders in Vientiane will no doubt build on the renewed
confidence the grouping enjoys in the international community.

While this is both necessary and important, it will surely
stand the organization in good stead to look well beyond economic
achievements and anti-terrorist co-operation. ASEAN needs to
urgently take cognizance of festering local issues that have the
invariable tendency to spill over, then inch their way to become
bilateral problems and end up being regional embarrassments.

Southern Thailand comes quickly to mind and in a slightly
different context, so does Myanmar.

It is important that ASEAN leaders are adequately briefed
before arriving in the Laotian capital about another festering
problem -- that of the Montagnards, meaning "mountain people",
the collective name given by the French to the numerous
indigenous tribes and aboriginal groups inhabiting the Vietnamese
Central Highlands.

The Montagnards inhabited the central highlands "long before
Cambodia, Laos or Vietnam became nations in the modern sense".
And yet there is now an influx of desperate Montagnards leaving
their ancestral homes for Cambodia -- initially in search of
asylum and third-country resettlement, citing relentless
religious persecution, increasing marginalisation and the blatant
confiscation of their land. The Vietnamese Government has
rejected these allegations.

When the UNHCR informed the Montagnards that this was not one
of its functions, some disappointed ones chose to make the two-
day jungle trek back to the central highlands. However, the
majority, now numbering more than 500, have decided to remain in
Cambodia until their land problem is resolved. They have refused
all offers of resettlement in the United States.

In effect, what was essentially a Vietnamese problem is now a
Cambodian problem -- worse, a problem not of its making. For
obvious financial and political reasons, Cambodia has decided
that its territory will only serve as a transit point for the
Montagnards.

As the Montagnards are now no longer willing to remain in the
border provinces but head directly to Cambodia's capital where
they have greater access to the media and the international
community, their presence has now become a UNHCR problem as well.
The UNHCR is unable to provide temporary accommodation in the
capital and it has become increasingly difficult to persuade the
refugees to return to Vietnam. It does not end there.

Slowly, others are getting into the picture. Some Montagnards
who resettled earlier in the U.S. are actively promoting
international awareness of the plight of their relatives. As most
of the Montagnards are Christians, there is a religious
dimension, with Western church groups joining the chorus of those
demanding a political solution to the Montagnard problem. They
are agitating for Vietnam to reverse the policies that are
forcing the Montagnards to desert the sacred homeland of their
forefathers.

There is yet another dimension to this. The Montagnards are
said to have fought heroically alongside U.S. forces during the
Vietnam War and have been widely recognized by U.S. war veterans
as the "true friends of the Americans" in Vietnam. The
Montagnards have paid very heavily for this alliance -- an
estimated 50 percent of male Montagnards were killed in the
Vietnam War.

We won't have to wait too long to find out whether or not the
summit in Vientiane proves to be a turning point for ASEAN, with
its leaders deciding how best to address the festering
development in the Central Highlands, the growing divisiveness in
southern Thailand and the lack of meaningful progress in Yangon.
For the sake of all our peoples, we hope that our leaders will
not let the Vientiane opportunity pass them by.

The writer, until recently Singapore's Ambassador to Cambodia,
is at present a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of
Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.