Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Tue, 1 Sep 1992 14:04:33 -0400
From:         Nhan Tran <tran@PEORA.SDC.CCUR.COM>
Subject:      NEWS/VN: FULRO group seeks UN protection
X-To:         FISHLM%SNYBUFVA@pucc.princeton.edu, scv@media.mit.edu,
              seasia-l@msu.BITNET, vietnam@cco.caltech.edu, vn-news@saigon.com

08/31

Cambodia-Vietnamese

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

By SHEILA McNULTY
 Associated Press Writer
   PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) -- More than 400 anti-Communist Vietnamese
insurgents have emerged from years of hiding in Cambodia's forests and asked
U.N. peacekeepers for protection, a U.N. spokesman said Monday.
   The insurgents said they fought with U.S. Special Forces in the hills of
northeastern Cambodia during the Vietnam War and never left, said U.N. spokesman
Eric Falt.
   They say they are members of the Front for Liberation of the High Plateau
Mountain People-United Front for the Struggle of the Oppressed Races.
   The united front, usually known by its original French acronym FULRO, was
formed by ethnic minority mountain people in Vietnam in the early 1960s to press
for autonomy.
   Most of its forces came from the central highlands region of southern
Vietnam.
   Falt said that about 300 of the 407 members, including women and children,
are suffering from illnesses ranging from diarrhea to malaria. He said they are
living in Mondulkiri province, about 15 miles from the Vietnamese border.
   The Front first resisted encroachments by the South Vietnam government in the
central highlands. The American military attempted with mixed success to enlist
FULRO in its struggle against Vietnamese Communist forces.
   After the 1975 North Vietnamese Communist victory, the movement revived to
oppose Hanoi's campaign to move mountain people to settled farming. Hanoi says
it is just a minor insurgency problem.
   "This is a group that's unwanted basically anywhere," said Falt.
   The insurgents in Cambodia approached U.N. military observers stationed near
the Vietnamese border in June to seek protection, said a U.N. official who
demanded anonymity. He said the insurgents were armed with Soviet-made AK-47
assault rifles and have no heavy weapons.
   U.N. peacekeeping officials flew Aug. 21 to the insurgents' camp, hidden in
the thick forest, the official said.
   Falt said that the insurgents "claim to struggle to safeguard the survival of
the race of Montagnard (mountain) people, its traditions, the integrity of its
territory and national sovereignty against the domination of the communists from
Hanoi."
   "They have basically been in the jungle for many years and they made contact
with us because they want out," Falt said.
   He said the insurgents originally demanded either an independent state or
resettlement in countries other FULRO members now live -- the United States and
France.
   They also asked the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to recognize them as
refugees, Falt said.
   The other U.N. official said the insurgents refused to return to Vietnam.
   U.N. peacekeepers are carrying out a peace accord to end nearly 13 years of
war between Cambodia's Vietnamese-installed government in Phnom Penh and three
Cambodian guerrilla groups. The accord provides for the withdrawal of all
foreign forces from Cambodia.
   "We became aware of them too late to incorporate them in any way in the
(peace) agreement," Falt said.
   He said the government and the FULRO group were enemies, but that the hill
tribe group only conducted "small defensive actions."
   The other U.N. official said government soldiers in northeastern Cambodia
were refusing to hand over their arms to U.N. peacekeepers while the group
remained armed.
   The group also could be considered enemies of the Khmer Rouge guerrilla
faction, which has refused to cooperate with the U.N. peacekeeping operation,
claiming Vietnamese forces remained in Cambodia.
   The Hanoi government says it withdrew its last troops in September 1989.
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