Illegal migrants helped to return home
(VNA): 
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Cambodian Government handed five ethnic minority people who volunteered to return to their homes in Gia Lai Central Highlands province.
These people illegally crossed the border into Cambodia in late 2004. As many as 41 ethnic people in Central Highlands have voluntarily returned from Cambodia to be reunited with their families.
The Vietnamese representatives affirmed that the humanitarian policy was extended to those illegal migrants and no discrimination or punishment would be taken against their illegal migration.
The ethnic minority people returned home in March after an agreement was signed by UNHCR, Vietnam and Cambodia in late January this year to resolve the issue of those people who had migrated to Cambodia with the mistaken idea that UNHCR could help them resolve property disputes in their villages.
Earlier, Vu Anh Son, representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Vietnam, met with local authorities and 18 returning ethnic minority families during his visit from May 18 to 21 to Gia Lai and Kon Tum provinces in the Central Highlands.
"No one I met amongst the returning people claimed they were beaten or harassed during their stay in Pleiku or upon their return home," said Mr Son, who visited the families in their homes. "They all seemed in good shape."
Mr. Son added that authorities did not impose any constraints on contact with the returning people.
After a recent trip to Vietnam's Central Highlands to check on the illegal migrants who voluntarily returned from Cambodia, the United Nations refugee agency reported that the returning migrants were pleased to be back.
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