Even thou many have lived decades in Cambodia and no ties to Vietnam, they have no rights to remain< sad state of affairs>

“Most of these long-term residents have more genuine links to Cambodia than Vietnam and see Cambodia as their home. Yet, Cambodian authorities frequently presume them to be Vietnamese nationals.”

Long marginalised and stateless, ethnic Vietnamese fishers in Cambodia have once again been evicted from their floating dwellings on Phnom Penh waterways. Now, hundreds have tried to migrate to Vietnam, but amid the pandemic, they have been left adrift

When Phnom Penh authorities tore apart her fishing nets and dismantled her floating home, Phla unlatched her longboat from the shores of the Tonle Sap River on the capital’s outskirts where it had been docked for decades.

Piloting a roofed wooden boat—sturdier than the lithe motorboats that her community uses for fishing, and sometimes sleeping—she and her four children followed the Tonle Sap from Prek Pnov District to where the river empties into the larger Mekong and continued south for four days in June until she reached the Vietnam border. There, near Ka’am Samnor Loeu Village, she’s been passing time with around 100 roofed motorboats and houseboats tethered together at a mucky depot where dredging boats dump sand pulled from the riverbed onto land.

Every morning and evening for at least two weeks in late June and early July, Vietnamese marine officials float by with a loudspeaker, warning the boat-dwelling community in Vietnamese that they should not cross the border now but will be allowed eventually, without specifying when. Some six kilometres south, a row of shipping boats and dredgers hold a line across the Mekong, blocking the mostly ethnic Vietnamese fishers from entering Vietnamese waters.

https://newnaratif.com/stateless-fisher ... y-vietnam/

I don't want to constantly sound heartless or racist. But..
There is another side to this coin.
Cambodia simply must start regulating the 3 decades old free flow of Vietnamese settlers, fishers, hunters and traders. Many of them are just plundering the country.

Sorry, i know this might sound strange to some Vietnamese - but Cambodia is not part of Vietnamese territory. Stop creep creep creeping in. The access-all-areas deals you made with youknowwho in 1975 have expired.

On the lake, especially in this area ^^ where the Tonle Sap river flows into the lake - huge floating towns and rapacious fishing is displacing Khmers who have lived here for far far longer than 30 years.
Don't be mislead by the sob story - the vast majority of people most adversely impacted are not the eons-old Vietnamese Cambodians, it is new comers, many of them very new.

But its not just here. On the coast it is very similar, fishing pillage.
And in the forests, and the bird netting everywhere. and the poisoning- by a free steady flow of "settlers", itinerants and just plain plunderers.
The old established Vn pop has been swelled enormously post '75 and again post 1990, and in many ways has become a seperate, parallel, alien society - linked to VN far more than it is to Cambodia. (especially in the fishing world)

'Just my view, but it is not uninformed. I have spent a bit of time on the lake and on the coast watching watching how it works.
A big part of the problem is just the sheer ruthlessly determined efficiency of the Vietnamese people - imagine how that translates with hunting, fishing and completely unregulated trading.

There has been heaps of warnings about getting paperwork in order.
There has been very careful oversight by Vietnam, so the protocols have been pretty thorough - and many more viable relocations handed out than to almost every other class of "displaced" persons in Cambodia.

Sure, some personal tragedies are happening, and i am not heedless of that - but that kind of tragedy goes with the territory here.
Displacement is always just a breath away. In this case, at least it will be for a greater good. imo

I mean the arrangements that allowed Vietnamese a high degree of uncontrolled free range in Cambodia after '75 as part of the deal for supporting Youknowwho to replace the KR.

These arrangement have never been publicly acknowledged but are generally assumed to have been set in rock.
That is why Cambodia has been flooded with new comers ever since. As you say, there were few of the old Vn-Cambodians still here in 1975.
Further, many believe that the Cambodian gov has always underestimated the numbers of Vietnamese in Cambodia since 1990 because they know how unpopular the "arrangements" and the real numbers would be if they ever became common knowledge.

PS, Don't be too harsh on Youknowwho. He had little alternative but he doesn't need to kowtow to Vietnam any more - so the tap has been turned off and some of the spillage is being mopped up.

I definitely think this issue is far more complex than many of the journalists give it due. And journalists are where most people are getting their information about it. For many journalists, I hypothesize that they are putting the Vietnamese into some prefabricated mental category of the "oppressed minority".

My wife and I actually did a little of our own informal research in Kg Chhnang. We went up to the Vietnamese village on land outside of town. The main guy we talked to admitted that he or some of his friends are migrants and weren't born in Cambodia. My wife liked them and didn't feel hatred towards them but I don't get the impression that it is cut and dried.

Figuring out who was really a Vietnamese-Cambodian way back when, and who has migrated recently is probably a really complex issue, in my view, as there is an incentive to be dishonest.

SternAAlbifrons wrote: ↑Fri Aug 06, 2021 7:06 pm I mean the arrangements that allowed Vietnamese a high degree of uncontrolled free range in Cambodia after '75 as part of the deal for supporting Youknowwho to replace the KR.

Do you mean 75 or 1979?

Sorry, '79., not 1975

(thanks DT's)

SternAAlbifrons , While I can agree with you on some things, how much Australian DNA do you have in your system, before I agree with you on other things.

'Not sure how that is relevant in any way to this particular and pressing issue in Cambodia, C.O.D.

PS. I have never squatted without papers in either Au or Kh
I have never been unable or unwilling to regularise myself. (EVery border crosser's primary responsibility)
I have never been asked to stop shitting in the water and to stop stealing fish in unlawful ways slap-dang in the middle of either countries most crucial and sensitive protein source.

Kiwis are not usually famous for that kinda stuff - but sorry to say, 'hard truth, many Vietnamese in Cambodia are.
It's a problem - well, according to Cambodia it is anyway.