UN General Assembly
1961

109. This problem is of direct concern to us because 600,000 of our compatriots live in South Vietnam in the most difficult circumstances and have practically no remedy against; the extra-legal measures to which they are subject. The Cambodian community in South Vietnam consists of descendants of the land's first occupants who were submerged by Vietnamese invasions but who have maintained an underlying unity of religion, language, custom and tradition. By an arbitrary decision of the Government of South Vietnam, Vietnamese nationality has been imposed on these people and they have been refused the right to preserve their customs and language and even to practise their own form of Buddhism. Sermons in Cambodian, Cambodian religious texts, etc. are not permitted. These violations of the sacred rights of the human person have been supplemented, in recent months, by extra-legal measures of extreme brutality, resorted to not only by the ordinary authorities of South Vietnam but also by the rebels opposing the Saigon Government. Several hundreds of these unfortunate compatriots of ours have tried to flee from this oppression and to seek refuge on Cambodian national territory; they have been pursued, arrested, tortured or shot down with machine-guns.