Socialist Republic of Vietnam

Ha Noi, March 5 (VNA) -- Illegal ethnic minority migrants, who just returned to their homes in the Central Highlands, after having spent six difficult months in make-shift Cambodian camps, recently spoke out about their experiences. According to these returnees, evil people had incited them to flee their homeland in the Central Highlands last year.

"We were living in crude palm and bamboo huts, our makeshift camps looked like barns in our hamlets. We had two meals a day, each with only one rice bowl, and we were allotted four chicken eggs a week," said Siu Lit, a resident of Lao hamlet of Nhon Hoa commune in Chu Se district, Gia Lai province.

"We had no vegetables in the meals, so we would have eaten grass if we had seen it," he said in his recent meeting with reporters from the newspaper Quan Doi Nhan Dan.

Siu Lit told the reporters "At the camps, we dared not talk about our home return because we would be beaten by Ama Cham and his followers immediately after they heard it."

"They already beat a person from Bruk hamlet of Chu Pah commune on his head," stressed Siu Lit, who was among the 61 illegal migrants who left the makeshift camps in Cambodia's Ratanakiri province for their homeland on March 2.

He said "I am now very happy to reunite with my wife, children, and community, but I now feel a pain in my heart whenever I turn my thoughts to those people still living in the camps. They looked at us for a long time with tears in their eyes when we left."

"The six months I spent in the makeshift camp were quite a terrible time in my life as I suffered untold hardships and lacked almost every thing," Siu Lit said, adding, "I lived without money, rice and meat."

Siu Lit recalled "There were more than 500 people living at the camps under the close watch of Ksor Kok's accomplices. Many of us wished to go back as we were bitterly disappointed at what Ksor Kok had told us before we fled our homeland."

"Some of us were beaten by Nhil, who came from Nu hamlet, Ha Bau commune of Dasc Doa district, and others were beaten by Ksor Kok's followers at the camps," Siu told reporters.

"I was beaten on my knee," he said, while rolling up his trousers to show the scar on his knee.

"Now, I have two things which I regret," he said with tears in his eyes, "First, I had to flee my homeland and I feel guilty towards my family, my community, the local authorities and the government as well."

He said that he was incited and duped by Ksor Kok and his accomplices, who had told him and others that the "De Ga State, supported by the United States, was due to win victory soon... People in the central highlands should flee the country to Cambodia and join together in a bid to form a government and an army to control the central highlands."

"The second," he added, "was the fact that I had told a lie to Rama Blinh's family when I asked him to flee the homeland. When I went back home, he was still ill but he asked me not to speak of his illness to his family in the hope that this would help his ailing father live longer so that he could still see him if he had a chance to go home," Siu Lit told reporters.--VNA