Sunday, December 27, 2009

Together again

Family reunited, eight years after brothers fled Vietnam with fear of persecution

Sun Journal Staff

Two brothers left behind wives and children when they fled Vietnam, walking for days through the jungle with no food to reach a refugee camp in Cambodia.

But eight years later, Y’Ten Rcam reunited with his wife H’Ria Nay, and his brother Y’Huon Rcam met his 11-year-old daughter H’Plai Nay, at Coastal Carolina Regional Airport in New Bern.

The family members reunited Dec. 16 with hugs and smiles, while people snapped pictures around them. They had been separated for eight years with little and sometimes no communication, after the brothers fled the central highlands of Vietnam on foot because of political and religious persecution.

Their families, members of the Montagnard ethnic group, had not known they were leaving for America, and Y’Ten’s wife H’Ria said she found out that her husband had made it to a refugee camp in the neighboring country of Cambodia by listening to the radio. Y’Huon said he was unsure he would ever see his daughter again.

“He did not think he could see his daughter again because (it was a) long way, just far away” said 18-year-old Y’Yoch Rmah, the two brothers’ nephew and a translator in a recent interview with the family. Y’Yoch’s father Y’Lia Rcam, also fled Vietnam with his brothers.

Faith-based support

The Montagnard people are an ethnic minority of Vietnam. Many have fled their homeland because of persecution that stems from their Christian beliefs, and because many Montagnards fought with U.S. troops during the Vietnam War.

Kay Reibold, a development specialist with the Raleigh-based Montagnard Human Rights Organization, said many of the Montagnard people believed that the U.S. would stand by their vision for an independent state if they backed the U.S. during the war.

“After we left Vietnam, they were persecuted because they had helped us,” said Susan Husson, diocesan refugee coordinator for the New Bern-based resettlement agency Interfaith Refugee Ministry. “Many of them were sent to ... camps or facilities of some sort. Some people were jailed and probably beaten daily.”

The first wave of Montagnards to settle in North Carolina came in 1986, Reibold said. Since then there has been a steady migration to the state, and now there are more than 8,000 Montagnards living in North Carolina.

Many refugees have been resettled in the state because there are many faith-based sponsors willing to help support them, Reibold said, and the refugees have a good record of getting jobs in the state.

“Very few refugees access welfare in North Carolina,” she said.

‘A new life’

Y’Ten and Y’Huon left Vietnam in 2001 after participating in a peaceful demonstration for their religious and land rights. Both men had been farmers in Vietnam, growing crops such as rice and coffee to feed their families. But Y’Ten said through a translator that his land was taken from him in 1995, although he tried unsuccessfully to get it back.

“We do love Vietnamese, but we don’t want the way they treat the Montagnards,” the translator said.

After participating in the demonstration, the brothers feared greater persecution and violence from the Vietnamese. They left the country, walking for 15 days through the jungle. They had to cross a river that runs between Vietnam and Cambodia that had been swollen with recent rains, which is why they said they had to leave their wives and children behind.

“They want the freedom to speech, free religion, everything to be free,” the translator said, speaking of why the brothers left Vietnam.

When they arrived in the United States, Y’Huon started working in a restaurant, and Y’Ten worked at Golden Corral. Y’Huon now works as a contractor at Camp Lejeune, and Y’Ten works as a landscaper in Havelock.

“I will live in a new life in America,” Y’Huon told the Sun Journal through a translator in 2002. “I come to this country, a democratic country, a free country, and I can have a good life here, but I can never forget about my family in Vietnam, especially my wife and my children.”

A slow process

Reibold said it is typically a fairly straightforward process to reunite families who have been given refugee status. But that was not the case for Y’Ten’s wife and Y’Huon’s daughter.

After her husband left, H’Ria was afraid because about 10 Vietnamese military officials came to her home for seven months, questioning her about her husband’s whereabouts.

“She (was) afraid that the police knew that she contact to her husband,” the translator said of H’Ria.

Because of her fears, H’Ria left Vietnam and took her niece with her, taking a bus, a car and a boat to get to Cambodia, where they lived in the country’s capital in Phnom Penh. The translator said it is very difficult to get through to Cambodia on the road, but H’Ria was lucky because she was not checked by Vietnamese officials.

The two were held up for years in the Cambodian capital waiting for approval of their immigration papers, even though they had been granted refugee status. Initially, H’Ria’s immigration application was rejected because she had claimed H’Plai as her daughter, even though she is her niece.

“They should have been automatically allowed to come immediately to the U.S., but unfortunately, according to a grave error we believe on the part of the reviewing officer, the aunt was denied,” Reibold said. “They should have been allowed to go as soon as they were determined to be refugees.”

The Montagnard Human Rights Organization lobbied for about four years, along with U.S. Rep. Walter B. Jones, R-N.C., and with the support of the Embassy of the United States in Phnom Penh, to get their papers approved, Reibold said.

H’Ria said that, in the time that she and H’Plai lived in a United Nations-run site in Cambodia, communication with her husband improved, but she still wasn’t happy because she wanted to talk to him each day.

There was a period during the eight years when H’Ria didn’t have any contact with her husband, although they were eventually able to speak to each other by phone once a month.

But the application was approved, and the family members were reunited. Both H’Plai and H’Ria said they were happy to see their family members again.

“She is happy to meet her father,” the translator said of H’Plai.

Laura Oleniacz can be reached at 252-635-5675 or at loleniacz@freedomenc.com.

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