Vietnamese Cambodian - Current Issue

Current Issue

The Vietnamese are the most vulnerable of Cambodia's minorities, and the most prone to discrimination and violations of their rights. Their status has much to do with the difficult history and relationship between Cambodia and Vietnam, which has helped create animosity and intolerance towards them. There are a few private schools teaching in Vietnamese; these are not officially sanctioned but neither have they encountered a great deal of resistance from state authorities. No state school provides any form of schooling in Vietnamese.

The current citizenship law of Cambodia makes it difficult for many of them to prove that they are citizens of Cambodia. This in turn severely limits their enjoyment of a variety of rights, and excludes them from fully participating as equal members in the political and economic life of the country. The discriminatory impact of this legislation, the loss or destruction of identity papers which occurred during the upheavals from the 1970s, and the fact that the Constitution of Cambodia only assigns the protection of human rights to citizens, leaves them particularly vulnerable.

Some Vietnamese are probably illegal immigrants, in the sense that they settled in Cambodia after the Vietnamese army overthrew the Khmer Rouge. However, it is likely that many of them were in fact Cambodian citizens who had fled the country during the period of Khmer Rouge rule. Because they are not ethnically ‘Khmer', the presumption of authorities continues to be that they are probably illegal immigrants. Unless they have identity papers demonstrating their Cambodian nationality, they risk losing their land or homes that they may have occupied for decades.

There continued to be some reports in 2006 of state officials evicting ethnic Vietnamese from their floating villages around Tonle Sap Lake, and even of seizing and destroying identity papers which might establish some of them as being Cambodian citizens.

Though not due to any official Cambodian government policy, any expression of distinct Vietnamese identity is still occasionally met with violence; people are occasionally set upon if they are heard to speak in Vietnamese. Even politicians considered ‘democratic' by outsiders periodically revert to slogans against the Vietnamese minority, describing them as a ‘yuon' threat, a word which can have a derogatory meaning. There have been reports of some Vietnamese who have been recognized as citizens being prevented from voting in 2003 and in later local elections.