US ambassador Pete Peterson Wednesday slammed the local authorities in a Vietnamese province for their "misguided" response to a wave of ethnic unrest after he was finally granted access to the region.
Officials in Gia Lai province had adopted an approach "totally focussed on the perceived threat to security rather than attempting to find constructive solutions to identified local problems," Peterson said after his long-sought visit from July 5-9.
"Clearly this is a misguided policy, and it is my hope that the local leadership will redirect their energies towards the real problems of the people," he said, adding that he had pressed the central government in Hanoi to intervene.
Peterson contrasted the attitude of the authorities in Gia Lai with the reception he had recived in neighbouring Dak Lak, another of four highland provinces which were swept by a wave of protests among the region's indigenous ethnic minorities in February and March.
"As we moved from Buon Me Thuot to Pleiku in Gia Lai province, we found that the officials there were not prepared to provide us with free access either to officials or to ordinary people," he said.
"In fact officials there aggressively sought to control our time and our movements. Public security personnel directly prevented us from talking to people as we visited small businesses and village markets."
Hundreds of thousands of settlers have moved to the central highlands in recent years as the government clears the region's forests to make way for large-scale cash crop plantations.
The influx has reduced the mainly Christian minorities of the highlands to a minority in virtually all other districts of the region, fanning violent protests -- HANOI (AFP)
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