Thread by @benmauk

In 2018 I wrote about one of the largest and least supported undocumented stateless populations in the world, ethnic Vietnamese people in Cambodia, for @NYTmag

nytimes.com/interactive/20…

On July 10, Cambodia's Ministry of the Interior released a notification on "The Management of Foreign Immigrants [Aliens] in Cambodia".

This is the government's first major update to the program initiated during my reporting in 2017, to document and register as foreign all ethnic Vietnamese in the country (and to confiscate any documents proving past Khmer residence or citizenship).

It is important to remember that most ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia have lived in the country for many generations. They have no generational memory of Vietnam with the exception of a period of forced migration under the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1980.

Some observations:

1. The government now considers ethnic Vietnamese to be "immigrant aliens". The terminology was not yet settled during my reporting. Non-Khmer people who had lived in Cambodia for generations were often called "non-immigrant foreigners".

2. Gov. claims about 90,000 people have registered for the "prakas" that gives them documentation as immigrants. All but a few hundred are ethnic Vietnamese.

Scholars estimate that there may be 400,000-1M ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia. Virtually none holds citizenship anywhere.

3. About half of those registered *already had* documents from previous (in many cases pre-1975) Khmer governments, showing long-term residence, which officials confiscated. This process was ongoing during my reporting and was described to me openly.

4. Some older ethnic Vietnamese people took to hiding documents which they felt proved their Cambodian-ness, and their historical residence.

This looks prudent now that the government is formally rewriting the history of ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia.

5. It is hopefully a good thing that ethnic Vietnamese now have recourse to a reliable legal status in Cambodia, for all of the reasons my article suggests.

But even those who have lived in the country for generations now have to wait 7+ years for citizenship, while paying every 2 years to maintain residency. Many of the families I met could not afford it.

Statelessness and state development have destroyed their livelihoods.

These costs should be waived for the very poor. Otherwise, they will become stateless again.

6. One thing that has happened since my reporting has been the erosion of an independent press in Cambodia. Both the Cambodia Daily and Phnom Penh Post, two formerly independent English-language papers, had reported on the situation of ethnic Vietnamese "boat people."

Both have been targeted by spurious politically motivated government attacks, and are now operating in reduced capacity under new ownership.

That said, there are still valuable stories reported on the subject, like this one: phnompenhpost.com/national/ethni…

But pro-government papers like the Khmer Times refer to ethnic Vietnamese uncritically as "illegal migrants"

khmertimeskh.com/744331/interio…

(This story does note that Vietnamese officials have requested that Cambodia grant citizenship to ethnic Vietnamese citizens who have lived in the country "for a long time".)

It remains to be seen how many ethnic Vietnamese are deported from Cambodia or coerced to migrate in the coming years for lacking the proper documents, now that the amnesty period has ended.