HANOI - Vietnam's Prime Minister Phan Van Khai has asked authorities to provide more farm land and investment for ethnic minorities in the Central Highlands, which were hit by widespread protests over land earlier this year.
"The state will find enough land for production to give to the people in the coming time," Monday's state-run Lao Dong (Labour) newspaper quoted Khai as telling a government meeting on development of the Central Highlands.
The paper said the meeting resolved that the government would "give priority to fast development, focusing on improving living standards for people, especially the ethnic minorities."
In a weekend report, the official Vietnam News Agency said Khai had asked authorities in the highlands to work out how many households were lacking farm land and to set up a land fund for the ethnic minorities.
Large numbers of minority hill people protested over land and religious rights in highland provinces in February and March in the worst unrest to hit communist Vietnam in years.
Former U.S. ambassador to Vietnam Douglas "Pete" Peterson, who left Vietnam on Sunday, gave a mixed report last week after making a fact finding tour of the highlands.
He said the provinces of Lam Dong and Daklak were "clearly focused" on finding solutions to problems caused by large-scale migration into ethnic minority areas and economic, social and political marginalisation of indigenous people.
However he said a third, Gia Lai, was following a misguided policy of focusing on security rather than such problems.
The protests and a ensuing crackdown were closely followed by the United States as they involved mainly protestant hill people from tribes that fought alongside U.S. forces in the Vietnam War. Members of the tribes later emigrated to the United States.
Hundreds of minority people fled the crackdown to Cambodia and 38 were permitted to resettle in the United States, a decision that greatly angered Hanoi. Around 400 are currently in Cambodia.
Hanoi has said they will not be punished if they return under a voluntary U.N. repatriation plan, but U.S.-based activists who visited Cambodia on a fact-finding mission last week said they should not be sent back due to safety concerns.
In a separate report, VNA quoted high-ranking cabinet members as saying more members of hill tribes must be recruited to state firms as a way to solve unemployment among minorities.
01:14 07-16-01
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