Montagnard demonstrators after being beaten by government security forces during a protest in the central highlands. (Photo: Human Rights Watch)Editorial
Washington Post
Once the Montagnards of Vietnam fought alongside American troops. Now Congress calls them terrorists.
Friday, April 28, 2006
CONGRESS tightened a law last year on refugee admissions in order (it thought) to keep terrorists and their supporters out of the country. The effect has been to bar friends and allies.
One example: Many Vietnamese Montagnards fought alongside U.S. forces during the Vietnam War and were then murderously oppressed by the Vietnamese government. During the war, the United States helped arm a Montagnard group called the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races, which continued to struggle for autonomy after the war ended. This group ceased to exist in 1992, when a band of nearly 400 fighters disarmed and were resettled in North Carolina. Under Congress's irrational new rules, however, the group has become, legally speaking, a terrorist organization, and 11 Montagnards still stuck in Cambodia would be denied refugee status because in the past they had offered the group "material support."
The Montagnards are not the law's only, or even principal, victims. Thousands of ethnic victims of the Burmese military regime, living in camps in Thailand, expected after long waits to receive refugee status; now they're stuck in limbo. So are large numbers of Colombians who were forced to support the leftist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Liberians, Somalis and anti-Castro Cuban dissidents are also being branded terrorists and kept out.
Misguided law now prevents the admission of a member or backer of any group of "two or more individuals" that "engages in, or has a subgroup which engages in," activities as commonplace as using an "explosive, firearm or other weapon or dangerous device." The law treats a Montagnard who once aided a U.S.-backed group no differently from an al-Qaeda operative. The administration has the authority to override this absurdity in certain instances, though not all. But it has not used this limited power, and even the need for a waiver is galling. America should not be "forgiving" people who did not, in fact, support terrorism. These are victims -- exactly the sort of people refugee and asylum programs are meant to protect.
An amendment being offered to the supplemental appropriations bill by Sens. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) would solve the problem cleanly. It would clarify that only associates and supporters of groups certified by the government as terrorist organizations should be denied refugee status and that those forced to aid terrorists are not themselves terrorists. Congress did not mean to create this problem. Fixing it should not be controversial.
One example: Many Vietnamese Montagnards fought alongside U.S. forces during the Vietnam War and were then murderously oppressed by the Vietnamese government. During the war, the United States helped arm a Montagnard group called the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races, which continued to struggle for autonomy after the war ended. This group ceased to exist in 1992, when a band of nearly 400 fighters disarmed and were resettled in North Carolina. Under Congress's irrational new rules, however, the group has become, legally speaking, a terrorist organization, and 11 Montagnards still stuck in Cambodia would be denied refugee status because in the past they had offered the group "material support."
The Montagnards are not the law's only, or even principal, victims. Thousands of ethnic victims of the Burmese military regime, living in camps in Thailand, expected after long waits to receive refugee status; now they're stuck in limbo. So are large numbers of Colombians who were forced to support the leftist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Liberians, Somalis and anti-Castro Cuban dissidents are also being branded terrorists and kept out.
Misguided law now prevents the admission of a member or backer of any group of "two or more individuals" that "engages in, or has a subgroup which engages in," activities as commonplace as using an "explosive, firearm or other weapon or dangerous device." The law treats a Montagnard who once aided a U.S.-backed group no differently from an al-Qaeda operative. The administration has the authority to override this absurdity in certain instances, though not all. But it has not used this limited power, and even the need for a waiver is galling. America should not be "forgiving" people who did not, in fact, support terrorism. These are victims -- exactly the sort of people refugee and asylum programs are meant to protect.
An amendment being offered to the supplemental appropriations bill by Sens. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) would solve the problem cleanly. It would clarify that only associates and supporters of groups certified by the government as terrorist organizations should be denied refugee status and that those forced to aid terrorists are not themselves terrorists. Congress did not mean to create this problem. Fixing it should not be controversial.
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