Dega Central Highlands Organization Dega Central Highlands Organization
Knowledgebase

Beyond North Carolina: Canada and other countries

Exile Explainer 9 views 3 min read Back

Most Dega refugees who were resettled went to the United States, and most of those to North Carolina. A smaller number went to Canada, and a few passed through other countries on the way. The record of those who did not go to America is thin, and this page sets out what it contains.

A family walking along a misty mountain trail
For a few Dega families, the road out of the camps led to Canada. Illustration.

Canada, from Cambodia

  • June 2005 — The Cambodia Daily reported eight Montagnard refugees flying out of Phnom Penh for Canada, with their belongings in International Organization for Migration bags. In September the same paper described Montagnard refugees starting new lives in Vancouver.
  • February 2011 — When the Cambodian government ordered the UN refugee center in Phnom Penh to close, 76 Montagnard asylum seekers were still there, 62 of them already recognized as refugees. On the evening of February 7 25 flew out, “bound for the city of Quebec,” The Cambodia Daily reported two days later, with 25 more due to follow that week. Four were to go to the United States, and ten who had been refused refugee status were to be sent back to Vietnam. A UNHCR spokeswoman said: “We are extremely grateful to Canada for opening its doors.”

We have not found a Canadian government figure for the number of Dega resettled, nor any account of whether they came as government-assisted or privately sponsored refugees, nor of where the families live now.

Canada, from Thailand

Y Quynh Bđăp, recognized as a refugee by UNHCR in Bangkok, was interviewed by the Canadian embassy for resettlement shortly before his arrest in June 2024. Radio Free Asia reported that Ottawa stalled his application after Vietnam announced terrorism charges against him; he had been sentenced in absentia in January 2024. On November 28, 2025, Thailand forcibly returned him to Vietnam, according to Human Rights Watch; his case is on his own page. We have found no record of Canada resettling other Dega from Thailand in recent years.

Other countries

Human Rights Watch recorded that about 1,300 Montagnard refugees had been resettled abroad from Cambodia between 2001 and 2006, without saying where; most went to the United States (see The 2002 resettlement). In 2016 thirteen recognized refugees were due to be flown from Cambodia to the Philippines to wait there for a third country; UNHCR could not then say which country would take them. In November 2025 Human Rights Watch urged “Australia, Canada, Germany, and other European states,” which had resettled Vietnamese refugees before, to take more of those at risk in Thailand.

France has the longest connection with our people, through the colonial period and through the French embassy in Phnom Penh, where Y Bhăm Êñuôl and other FULRO leaders sought refuge in April 1975, before the Khmer Rouge took them away and killed them (see Y Bhăm Êñuôl). We have not found a published account of a Dega community in France, Germany, Scandinavia, Australia or anywhere else outside North America.

Help us fill this page

If your family was resettled in Canada, Europe or anywhere other than the United States, we would like to record when you came, from which camp, and where Dega families live now. We will not publish names or places without your agreement. See Our organizations and Asylum today.

Sources

Compiled September 2026.

canadaquebecvancouverresettlementthird countryunhcrcambodiathailandphilippineseuropefrancediasporaexile
Was this answer helpful?

Related Articles

Asylum today: Cambodia, Thailand, and the reach of the state The Dega who leave the highlands are no longer safe once they are out of them. On November 28, 2025, Thailand handed a UNHCR-recognized refugee back to Vietnam, to serve ten years imposed at a trial he was not present at. That single act describes the present situation better than any summary could. Explainer 37 views Read More North Carolina The largest Dega community outside Vietnam is in North Carolina. It is there because the American soldiers we fought alongside came from there, and because when the survivors of the resistance walked out of the forest those soldiers remembered and campaigned until something was done. Reference 39 views Read More The Cambodian camps, 2001–2005 Between 2001 and 2005 the nearest country stopped being a refuge and became a holding area. Thousands crossed into Cambodia after the February 2001 crackdown; UNHCR opened sites in the border provinces; the sites were closed, protection officers were confined to Phnom Penh, and people were sent back. This is how that happened, in order. Explainer 33 views Read More The wider diaspora North Carolina holds the largest Dega community outside Vietnam, but it is not the only one. There are Dega in France, in at least five other American states, and in Cambodia — where the Jarai and the Bunong were never a diaspora at all, because the border was drawn through them. This page is what we can establish about the rest, and it is thinn... Reference 28 views Read More Kok Ksor A Jarai from Cheo Reo who joined BAJARAKA as a schoolboy, served FULRO as its chief of staff, and spent the second half of his life in South Carolina making the case for our people at the United Nations and in the parliaments of Europe. For three decades Kok Ksor was the Dega most foreign governments had heard of, and the one Vietnam most often... Spotlight 14 views Read More The 2002 resettlement: from the Cambodian camps to North Carolina In the summer of 2002 close to nine hundred Dega who had fled into Cambodia after the February 2001 protests were flown to North Carolina. It was the largest single movement of our people to the United States. It happened because a plan to send them back to Vietnam collapsed in the open, in front of UN staff, in a forest camp in Mondulkiri. Explainer 14 views Read More

Powered by WBAMS