NEWS STORY: Nearly 30 Years After War, Persecution of Christian Group Persists in Vietnam

c. 2005 Religion News Service KON TUM, Vietnam _ Once a month, Vietnamese police bang on the door of Nay Thit’s small wooden village house and force him to sign a declaration of happiness. The declaration asserts that Nay Thit has no problems with the government and that he will not try to flee the […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

KON TUM, Vietnam _ Once a month, Vietnamese police bang on the door of Nay Thit’s small wooden village house and force him to sign a declaration of happiness.

The declaration asserts that Nay Thit has no problems with the government and that he will not try to flee the country or encourage others to do so. If he does not comply, he could find himself in prison, for the fourth time.


Nay Thit is a Montagnard _ an ethnic minority comprised of mostly Christian hill tribes in Vietnam’s Central Highlands region. Like many Montagnards, Nay-Thit, 60, worked and fought alongside Americans during the Vietnam War. Nearly 30 years later, Montagnards say their struggle continues, with religion a key point of friction.

The Vietnamese government has made public gestures in recent months to show a new tone of religious tolerance, but life in the Central Highlands remains tense with potential for conflict.

“Everything is unfair between the Vietnamese and the Montagnards,” Nay Thit said in a hushed voice, as he walked along a dusty road with his hat pulled down to shade his face. “We want to have our own government. We want autonomy. It is very difficult.”

The Central Highlands is comprised of four provinces about 150 miles north of Ho Chi Minh City and is home to one million Montagnards. The conflict between the Vietnamese and the Montagnards is rooted in resentment over the war, land ownership rights and religious repression. Nay Thit is Catholic and has been arrested in the past for resisting the government and fleeing to Cambodia.

“They arrest us and take us back,” said Nay Thit, who worked as an interpreter for Americans during the war and last served prison time in 1993. “Vietnam pays Cambodia to give us back.”

In January, Vietnam, Cambodia and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees agreed that 750 Montagnards living in Cambodian refugee camps near the Vietnamese border would be returned because they were rejected or refused settlement in the United States. The Vietnamese government promised that the Montagnards would not be punished for trying to leave.

“I think there’s some real denial on the part of the UNHCR,” Sara Colm, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch said. “It’s against their mandate to send people back to a place where they are being persecuted. We have documented systematic persecution as well as arrest and torture of Montagnard Christians in Vietnam.”


Some Montagnards who successfully reach Cambodia are given asylum and brought to the United States. More than 4,000 Montagnards currently live in North Carolina.

“A group of Montagnards just left Cambodia for the United States,” Anne Peters, of Jesuit Refugee Services, in Phnom Penh said. “One of them was Ksor Ni, the brother of the Montagnard leader.”

The Montagnard leader is a man named Kok Ksor, who escaped to the United States in the 1980s and lives in Spartanburg, S.C., where he runs the Montagnard Foundation. Kok Ksor is a founding member of the United Struggle Front for the Oppressed Races (FULRO), a Montagnard independence movement that has drawn ire for speaking out against the government.

In February, the Vietnamese government offered to allow outlawed Protestant “house-churches” to operate if they renounce connections with Kok Ksor, who many feel is orchestrating uprisings in the Central Highlands from the United States.

“There have been problems with the Montagnards trying to flee to Cambodia because Montagnards in the United States are encouraging them,” Nguyen Do Huynh, a tour guide who is half Montagnard and half Vietnamese, said. “The government has been giving them extra money now to make their lives here easier.”

After the Vietnam War, the Communist government took large chunks of Montagnard land in the Central Highlands that is now used for growing coffee and rubber. Many village churches were shut down or bulldozed, allowing for only government sanctioned churches in cities. Those who practice Dega Christianity _ the Montagnard equivalent of evangelicalism _ were forced to renounce or face arrest. The restrictions on religious practices left many upset and some in an uproar.


Despite the government’s claims of attempted appeasement, the situation seems to worsen for the Montagnards each year.

On Easter 2004, peaceful protests in the streets of Pleiku, a town just south of Kon Tum, drew a violent response from police who used tear gas and barbed wire to corral the crowds. More than 100 Montagnards were arrested and 10 were officially confirmed dead, according to a recent Human Rights Watch report.

While the most severe restrictions have been imposed on Protestants and Jarai villagers in the Central Highlands _ who are seen as having the strongest historical connections with the United States _ most Christians in the area feel the strain on their religious rights.

“It is very difficult for the Christians here,” John Ho, a Vietnamese Bible teacher at an orphanage in Kon Tum, said. “There are many limitations by the government.”

Police stopped Catholics who live in the surrounding villages from coming to pray at the Montagnard church last Christmas, Ho said.

All churches must be registered with the government and have a Vietnamese priest. Getting a permit to build a new church in the Central Highlands is considered a miracle.


“The last time someone tried to build a church without a permit, the government bulldozed four churches as punishment,” Ho, 55, said. “The Communist government is atheist. They don’t like the religion.”

The issue of religious freedom is highly sensitive in Vietnam, as the country tries to move beyond its history of conflict and move toward international respectability. Questions about the country’s human rights practices could be an obstacle, as last year the U.S. State Department labeled Vietnam a “country of concern” because of its record of religious intolerance.

The attention may have caused the government to tighten its grip. Trips to the Central Highlands are discouraged for tourists. Those who dare to venture off Vietnam’s tourist track must take circuitous routes on rickety minivans and get clearance at military checkpoints. Try searching for the word “Montagnard” at an Internet cafe in Vietnam and the browser may shut down.

“It’s not something the government wants on the world’s radar right now,” Colm, of Human Rights Watch, said. “The Vietnamese government does not want visible evidence of violations of religious and human rights in the Central Highlands.”

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

State media reports very little about unrest in the Central Highlands, with the exception of the occasional story about arrests of guerrilla fighters or people disrupting the “national unity.” With groups of Montagnards still crawling through the jungles in search of freedom, Vietnam’s latest conflict does not appear to be going anywhere.

“If we do not protest, they will not pay attention to the Montagnards,” Nay Thit, who spent nearly three years in a Communist reeducation camp after the war, said. “They took our land for their business. It’s a very dictatorial regime.”


Nay Thit said he has given up trying to escape Vietnam. He spends his days working in the jungle, making barely enough money to get by. In the evenings he teaches English to children in his village and encourages them to find a way to move abroad.

“One day the Vietnamese government will have a plan for the Montagnards,” Nay Thit said, resigned to a life of government-enforced happiness. “But not yet.”

MO/JL RNS END

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