Word: gia
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...exodus to Cambodia has now begun. TIME has met more than 160 would-be refugees trapped in wet, mosquito-infested jungles, afraid of being rounded up by Cambodian police and repatriated. They are battling hunger and illness. "We came so that the international community would help us," says a Gia Lai man in Cambodia's Ratanakiri province. But so far, no help has come. Still, says another, "It is better to die here than in Vietnam...
...Vietnamese government dismisses reports of Montagnards' fleeing as "fabrications." According to Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung, "There is no reason for ethnic minority people in the Central Highlands to leave their homelands." One of those "fabrications" is a 40-year-old man from Gia Lai who took part in the Easter demonstrations. Asked why he left the Highlands, he recalls: "Police, soldiers and Vietnamese people came to our village and kicked in our doors and attacked us." Now, having trekked for days, he is hiding in Ratanakiri?some 600 km from Phnom Penh and the nearest office...
...plight of the Montagnards. His goal, according to Hanoi, is an independent state. It says Ksor and confederates are also reconstituting F.U.L.R.O., a separatist guerrilla force disbanded in 1992. Ksor allegedly persuaded poor farmers to take part. Says Vu Quang Khuyen, police chief of Ayun Pa district in Gia Lai: "They are uneducated, lazy and easily deceived...
...state-controlled media. Dak Lak officials screened for TIME four minutes of edited video footage in which some protesters indeed advance on riot police and militiamen, but it's impossible to tell from the fragment who started the clashes, and the rest of the tape wasn't made available. Gia Lai Governor Pham The Dung even goes so far as to compare the protesters to Iraqi insurgents. "Terrorism does not mean they have to use explosives," he says. "They could even use martial arts." Scores of people have been arrested in the Highlands, the government says. Those who then performed...
...interviews arranged by local officials, government representatives and some Montagnards echoed the official accounts. But these were not supported by anyone interviewed away from oversight. Photographs obtained from a Jarai demonstrator now in Cambodia show marchers in Gia Lai carrying banners calling for land and religious rights and the removal of soldiers from villages?not for an independent state. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International assert that the security forces initiated the fighting and incited civilians to attack the marchers, injuring hundreds. A doctor who was on duty that weekend in Dak Lak's main hospital told TIME that "many...