TUOC BIEK, Vietnam (Reuters) - Vietnamese officials hustled journalists out of an ethnic minority hamlet on Tuesday after defiant women said they were worried for their husbands' safety if they were repatriated under a controversial U.N. plan.
The women from the Gia Rai tribe in the hamlet of Tuoc Biek in Gia Lai province in Vietnam's Central Highlands wept as they told reporters security services kept them under watch and they were forbidden to practice their religion.
"They follow us and watch us all the time," said Bom, 30, when asked how the authorities treated the women.
Her husband is among the more than 1,000 people who fled to Cambodia after a crackdown on widespread ethnic protests last year. She said she feared he would be arrested if he returned.
"If my husband were to come back," she said, "and nothing was to happen to him, then I would want him to come back."
Groups of women cried as they saw journalists entering the village. They said Communist authorities prevented them from practising a separatist faith they call "Dega" Protestantism.
"The state doesn't allow it, because it's the Dega religion," said one named H'rinh.
As the litany of complaints grew, the chairman of the local town People's Committee, Nguyen Than Xuan, intervened: "It's finished, it's finished," he told reporters. "Now please get into your cars."
He and other government officials then shooed journalists back on to buses saying it was "not safe" to be in the village. The villagers shook hands and embraced reporters as they left.
AGITATION BY U.S.-BASED EXILES
Hanoi has blamed the unrest on agitation by U.S.-based exiles who fought alongside U.S. forces in the Vietnam War and seek an independent hill-tribe state they call "Dega".
It shut off access to the region for most independent observers for much of the past year and sent in large numbers of soldiers and police to restore order.
The media visit, only the second since the unrest broke out in February 2001, was arranged with the apparent aim of showing conditions had improved and authorities were sincere in saying no one would be discriminated against if they returned from Cambodia.
But earlier on Tuesday, Blin, a Gia Rai teenager who spent a month camped in a Cambodian forest last year after leaving his village of Do in Gia Lai, told reporters he was beaten up by Vietnamese guards after being caught near the border.
"They told me I was in a restricted area and they beat me," he said.
Hanoi agreed to a repatriation plan with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees last month but this has been strongly criticised by the United States and human rights groups for lacking adequate safeguards for returnees.
UNHCR began the repatriation on Tuesday despite these protests.
A Cambodian government official said 15 minority people left Cambodia's northeastern province of Ratanakkiri for Vietnam's Kontum province accompanied by UNHCR staff.
UNHCR officials said last week that a further 94 of those in camps in Cambodia had volunteered to return.
A Vietnamese Foreign Ministry statement on Tuesday urged UNHCR to press ahead with the agreed plan.
"Vietnam considers UNHCR needs to be independent in its actions and not allow itself to be manipulated by any outside forces," the statement said.