Un Refugee Agency Officials Visit Vietnam Province
A UN refugee agency delegation has completed a three-day trip to a Vietnamese province to meet illegal immigrants who returned from Cambodia a few years ago.
A Gia Lai province official said Thursday that the Deputy Head of Representative to Thailand of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Giuseppe De Vincentis, thanked the local administration for enabling his delegation carry out the visit.
The delegation met with ethnic minority returnees in Ia Grai, Duc Co, and Chu Se districts and with the province people's committee Chairman Pham The Dung.
Since Vietnam started cooperating with the UNHCR and Cambodia on the issue in 2001, Gia Lai province has taken back 182 returnees.
In April the UNHCR sent a delegation led by Erika E. Feller, Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, to the province. She reported: “Returnees from Cambodia were neither punished nor maltreated; on the contrary, they received support and assistance for re-integration.”
Source: Thanh nien, VnExpress, VNA
