Kerry (D-MA) Inaction Kills Human Rights Legislation (From 2002)

WASHINGTON - Despite growing calls from human rights groups, US Army Special Forces veterans, and pleas from homeless refugees fleeing genocide Senator John Kerry (D-MA) has stalled the Vietnam Human Rights Act (Senate Bill HR-2833) since September 2001.

The stalled Bill would have sanctioned the communist Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) against further racially based sterilization, terrorism and genocide of the Christian hilltribe Dega peoples living in the Central Highlands region of the country.

The Degar tribes people, commonly known to westerners as the Montagnards, are ethnically unrelated to the Vietnamese. The Central Highlands region was never a traditional part of Vietnam. The region has been the home of the Degar tribes for at least a thousand years.

With HR-2833 stalled by John Kerry of Massachussetts, Vietnam is free to continue its widely publicized “cultural leveling” program. This means Vietnam will continue without restriction the ethnic cleansing of the Degar Christians in the Central Highlands region in an attempt to gain control of the Dega land and resources.

As recently as 1970 there were an estimated 3 million Montagnards in various tribes living in the region but as a result of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam’s ongoing campaign of ethnic terror and extermination, the total population of Montagnards is now below 650,000. Nearly two thirds of the Montagnards have died in only 32 years, including more than half the male population.

This is why HR-2833 was passed without delay through the House of Representatives last summer by a margin of 411 to 1 to bring an immediate halt to this tragic situation. The Bill was then rushed to the Senate where immediate passage was expected due to the urgency of the current situation.

But since September 2001 Senator John Kerry of Massachussetts has thwarted all attempts to bring HR-2833 to the floor for a vote. Kerry’s deliberate sabotage of this urgent legislation has caused grave concern in the human rights community, especially because there is no explanation for Kerry’s position. Attempts to contact the Senator on this issue have been ignored by his office.

John Kerry needs to do some explaining before this gets worse. Or simply change his position. The Daily Catholic is listing him as a “Herod’s Hero” for having the second worst human rights record in the US Congress. A Montagnard source informed us it was common knowledge in the 1970s that there were serious business dealings involving Kerry and the late Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown with the new incoming communist government. Windfall profits of more than half a million dollars were paid to Ron Brown according to the same source. Sources inside and outside the Degar community say Kerry has proposed future dealings with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

Has Senator John Kerry been pressured by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to kill or stall Bill HR-2833? Is this why Senator Kerry so eager to grant Most Favorable Nation (MFN) trade status for Vietnam?

Kerry’s inaction on HR-2833 allows the Vietnam’s genocide and sterilization programs in the Central Highlands region to continue today.

Is Senator Kerry going to stall HR-2833 until the region is under complete control of the Vietnamese, until all the Dega Montagnard peoples driven out or killed, before he allows the Vietnam Human Rights Act onto the Senate floor for a vote?

FROM 2004:

Vietnamese Christians Face Persecution During Holiday Protest

by Allie Martin
April 16, 2004

(AgapePress) - A protest against religious oppression turned lethal over Easter weekend for hundreds of believers in Vietnam's central highlands, where a crackdown on ethnic Christians by the Communist government of Vietnam has reportedly left hundreds dead.

Scores of Christians belonging to an ethnic minority collectively known as the Degar people, or the Montagnards, were arrested during Easter weekend in Vietnam's central highlands. More than a thousand of these ethnic Christians were brutally attacked for protesting against religious oppression and the confiscation of their tribal lands.

Kok Ksor, president of the Montagnard Foundation, says Vietnam's government, which recognizes only a handful of state-sponsored religions, has clashed many times with minority Christians, and persecution against them has been severe.

The Vietnamese Christian leader says the government prevents believers from assembling and forbids even two or three people to come together to worship God.

If caught doing so, Ksor says "they will arrest us and then throw us into prison. You know, it's very hard, and we just can't take anymore. That's what we want to pray, that God will change the minds, and to give us freedom of religion."

Protest organizers claim the police clamped down on the Easter weekend demonstration and sealed off the area to foreigners. Then the violence began. International human rights groups affirm that ethnic Christians have been persecuted for their beliefs, and the police's treatment of the peaceful protestors in this recent incident provided further evidence of the communist government's intolerance.

The Foundation's head says he does not understand why Vietnamese leaders have such animus toward Christians. He says government officials should realize that Christ's followers are good citizens.

"The Bible teaches that you have to respect your government," Ksor says, "and the Christians try to love one another. If many people become Christians, it looks like [the government] would want to have the good people on their side. I don't know why they hate the Christian people."

The Montagnard Foundation's primary purpose is to bring human rights grievances before the international communities and to advocate for the social, political, and human rights of the ethnic Christians in Vietnam.

"In December 2002, the Vietnamese government sentenced journalist Nguyen Khac Toan to 12 years in prison, the heaviest term ever handed down to an individual for Internet activities, according to Reporters San Frontieres. Nguyen was found guilty of spying for e-mailing material from an Internet café in Vietnam to Vietnamese human rights groups abroad that the government deemed “reactionary.” Three other cyber-dissidents are currently being held in Vietnam."

http://www.iwmf.org/features/6922

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