Vast areas of mountainous jungle in Vietnam and Laos are strictly out of bounds to journalists and human rights monitors, but the hill tribes who have taken refuge there have found another way to tell the world about their plight.

Still considered enemies today by their respective governments, the Hmong in Laos and the Montagnards in Vietnam claim they are being persecuted because of their connection to former rebels who took up arms against the communist regimes more than four decades ago.

Graphic footage filmed last year in the Lao jungle and posted on the popular video sharing website YouTube shows a young Hmong boy, his belly sliced open and his intestines hanging out. The boy says he was attacked by solders when he left his family's encampment to search for food.

Amnesty International reports that this video was shot in Xieng Khousang province in northern Laos and the boy, who was aged around 10, died two days later without any professional medical attention.

In the same video, titled "Hunted Like Animals" and directed by Rebecca Sommer, visibly traumatised Hmong asylum seekers filmed in Thai refugee camps describe the slaughter of their relatives by Lao security forces.

Other footage in the same YouTube video, taken on May 19, 2004, captures the aftermath of the killing of a group of five Hmong children, including showing their mutilated bodies.

This was one of the few attacks to reach the eyes and ears of the international community. When the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) expressed its concern about this incident and others, the Lao government responded that the victims had not lodged any complaint with the authorities.

A few thousand Hmong, including women, children and elderly people, are thought to be living in scattered groups in the jungle on the run from Lao armed forces.

They are the remnants and descendents of the "Secret Army", a CIA-funded faction that fought alongside the United States in the 1960s when the Vietnam War spread across the border into Laos and Cambodia.

After the Communist victory in 1975, small numbers of soldiers from the losing side launched armed resistance against the government, based in the jungle.

Despite no longer posing an apparent military threat, these Hmong are still hunted down and attacked with automatic weapons and grenades, both inside their camps and when they venture out to search for food, according to the latest report from Amnesty International.

Natalie Hill, Amnesty International's Asia Pacific deputy director, said: "The Hmong groups living in the jungle are destitute - the Lao authorities have a responsibility to protect them, not least because of the children involved. Instead, their regular attacks mean the groups live in perpetual danger of their lives."

Another video on YouTube, posted this time by the U.S.-based campaign group The Montagnard Foundation, features members of Vietnamese hill tribes, known collectively as Montagnards, telling of beatings, torture and imprisonment.

After the fall of Saigon, Montagnard guerrillas continued a separatist campaign in Vietnam's Central Highlands until the early 1990s, when they disbanded, put down their arms and took up Christianity. Vietnamese authorities have declared the form of evangelical Christianity followed by many Montagnards a political movement, not a religion, and made it illegal.

Human Rights Watch reports that despite an official loosening of religious restrictions in Vietnam, security forces have launched a "vicious crackdown" on Montagnard Christians in recent years, with many fleeing the country or going into hiding for fear of being jailed or killed.

It is estimated more than 350 Montagnards have been imprisoned since 2001, largely for peaceful political or religious activities, or trying to seek asylum in Cambodia. Human Rights Watch says there is compelling evidence of torture and other mistreatment of detainees.

Scott Johnson, advisor to The Montagnard Foundation, said the U.S.-based organisation is using modern technology to monitor human rights violations in Vietnam's Central Highlands and to spread news of Montagnards who have been jailed, killed, or injured.

"YouTube is indeed proving to be a useful new weapon. Cell phones and the internet are also very important. But any Montagnards caught with cell phones or video recorders are likely to be detained, put under surveillance, tortured or worse," he said.

"We had video footage of the 2004 Easter prayer vigil which showed many Montagnards being beaten and even killed, but the film was confiscated by police."

The descendants of America's so-called "forgotten allies" are still paying with their lives, but thanks to YouTube their stories are not dying in the jungle with them.

Reuters AlertNet is not responsible for the content of external websites.