been more thoroughly documented and assessed at least since 2012, when Boat Without Anchors was published.37 This situation has long historical and socio-political roots that are deeply interconnected with the complex bilateral relationship between Cambodia and Vietnam.38 Already during French colonial times, separate jurisdictions existed for Vietnamese residents and the Khmer majority population.39 These categorisations were carried over into independent Cambodia and given new meaning. It is likely that the majority of the ethnic Vietnamese population residing on the territory at the time of independence was henceforth treated as non-citizens, although a pathway to naturalisation existed and was used by numerous individuals. The 1962 national census identified 217,774 Vietnamese ‘nationals’ within a total population of more than 5.7 million (almost 4 per cent), while the total ethnic Vietnamese population may have been as high as 400,000.40 During the early 1970s, the regime of President Lon Nol politicised negative public sentiment towards the ethnic Vietnamese minority and turned it into violent persecution. Attacks and massacres resulted in the killing of thousands of ethnic Vietnamese, and another 200,000 to 250,000 fled or were forcibly deported to South Vietnam.41 After Khmer Rouge forces captured Phnom Penh, in April 1975, the situation for many minority groups drastically deteriorated.42 Another estimated 150,000 to 170,000 Vietnamese were deported across the border to Vietnam during the same year.43 A demographic expert report commissioned by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) concluded that almost all of the remaining 20,000 ethnic Vietnamese were systematically killed during the Khmer Rouge regime. By the end of 1978, the Vietnamese minority had virtually disappeared from Cambodia. During the early 1980s, many of the Vietnamese Cambodian refugees returned to Cambodia and have since faced 37 Nguyen, Lyma & Christoph Sperfeldt (2012) Boat Without Anchors: A Report on the Legal Status of Ethnic Vietnamese Minority Populations in Cambodia under Domestic and International Laws Governing Nationality and Statelessness, Phnom Penh: Jesuit Refugee Service. 38 See Canzutti, Lucrezia (2019) ‘Precarious (Non-)Citizens: A Historical Analysis of Ethnic Vietnamese’ Access to Citizenship in Cambodia’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 48(7): 1764-1784. 39 Low, Sally (2024) Colonial Law Making: Cambodia under the French, Singapore: NUS Press. 40 Poole argued that many ethnic Vietnamese may have adopted Cambodian nationality in order to be eligible for certain restricted occupations. Using his own estimates based on a criterion of ethnicity, Poole estimated that 394,000 ethnic Vietnamese lived in the country at the time of the 1962 census. Poole, Peter (1974) ‘The Vietnamese in Cambodia and Thailand: Their Role in Interstate Relations’, Asian Survey 14(4): 332-333. 41 Pouvatchy, Joseph (1976) ‘L’Exode des Vietnamiens du Cambodge en 1970’, Mondes Asiatiques 7: 340347. 42 See Keo Duong (2018) Khmer Rouge Nationalism and Mass Killing: Perception of the Vietnamese, Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University. 43 Kiernan, Ben (2006) The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975–1979, New Haven: Yale University Press, 296. 14