Just before Christmas, five members of Vietnam’s security forces entered the hill tribe village of Plei JoNing in the central highlands – searching for Christians. They arrested three Montagnards - Siu Seo, Siu Ai and Nay Glel and took them to their office in Phu Thien town. “We will see if your god can help you now”, they told the prisoners as they crucified them to flagpoles in the figure of the cross.
The “centurions” however, did not spear the Christian Montagnards. Instead they tortured them with an electric cattle prod. The Vietnamese police taunted the victims hanging there - “Where is your Jesus now?” The Montagnard Christians however, refused to renounce their belief in God and hung there for one day and a night.
This event actually occurred in the year 2000 on December 2nd. It was an event that would escalate into a new phase of persecution in 2002 confronting the indigenous Montagnards. Today in the central highlands of Vietnam brutal martial law is being enforced by the Vietnamese government - while the world remains largely silent - while Western governments (and Japan) grant billions of dollars of aid to Vietnam and discuss trade deals.
Today in Vietnam thousands of soldiers repress Christianity to a degree that prompted several Ministers from the European Parliament and members of the Transnational Radical Party to write to Kok Ksor, President of the Montagnard Foundation in the United States. They urged him to have his people inside Vietnam cancel Christmas celebrations in order to prevent further retaliations by the Vietnamese government.
Why however, does Vietnam continue to persecute the Montagnards - one of the oldest races of indigenous people in Asia?
The answer lies partially in “revenge” as over 40,000 Montagnards had served as “loyal Allies” to the US military during the Vietnam War. After taking over South Vietnam in 1975 the victorious communists would have the Montagnard leaders executed for supporting the United States.
The Hanoi government also started a long-term plan to exploit the natural resources of the Montagnards. It was a plan however, that could not take place with the Montagnard people remaining on their ancestral lands. Officially this policy today is called “Fixed/Field - Fixed/Residence”. It forcibly relocates the Montagnards to small plots of infertile land where they starve and suffer malnutrition while their homelands are carved up by the government to make way for coffee plantations and logging operations.
Once the Montagnards are driven from their lands, the authorities relocate migrants from other parts of Vietnam to the region. It is a process of colonization where the Montagnards become an exploited minority. UNICEF would report in 2001 that Montagnard children are destined to suffer extreme poverty and malnutrition. “But the reason you Montagnards are poor is because you have too many children” the Vietnamese government then declares. And so Hanoi enforces mandatory family planning sessions and coercive sterilization on the Montagnards to “reduce their poverty”.
The Vietnamese government offers cash incentives to the poor Montagnards to get surgically sterilized. To enforce these policies Hanoi uses funding from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the World Bank and Asian Development Bank. Last year the government officially announced zero growth targets for the Montagnards. However, does the world realize there are 80 million ethnic Vietnamese in Vietnam and that the Montagnard’s entire population today numbers less than one million? Given that Human Rights Watch stated in 2002 - “The Montagnards have been repressed for decades”, should we support the Vietnamese regime with such aid, when it has a horrendous record of violating human rights?
I met a Montagnard woman whose sister had agreed to become surgically sterilized after authorities promised her husband a job in the police force. Because they were poor, her sister agreed, but she died whilst undergoing the operation. That was in 1997 and after her death the authorities then fired the husband from the 'promised job' in the police.
In April 2000 I went to the office of the UNFPA in Geneva. The chief external relations officer, ‘Eric Palstra’ could not explain the allegations of sterilizations but stated “correct implementation of family planning programs does not always trickle down to local authorities in Vietnam.”
Earlier this year in 2002 villages such as Buon Tri, Dak Lac province were surrounded by Vietnamese soldiers. Montagnard girls were forced at gunpoint to succumb to injections operated by mobile medical teams and were told the injections prevent them from giving birth.
If journalists and human rights monitors were not banned from the region - perhaps someone could assist this village…but of course that is Hanoi’s plan - to keep their deadly secrets hidden.
Other horrors are documented by the US State Department, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International where Montagnards were forced to renounce Christianity while drinking animal’s blood. Freedom House would expose “Plan 184” a centrally directed campaign to "target and suppress Christians in ethnic minority areas”.
But why is Vietnam so afraid of Christianity?
The communist party today is standing at a crossroads - facing a new road leading to the wealth of capitalism. The other road however, is the worn path of outdated communist ideology where the prospect of losing power to “religious influence” is too great a risk for the communist elite.
The greatest fear of Vietnam’s dictatorial regime is that their monopoly of power will collapse like the Soviet Union. Hanoi calls this great fear “peaceful evolution”. It is a word that emerged in Hanoi’s vocabulary when the Berlin Wall fell - and it rippled like a serpent across the ocean. It is why today “Hanoi’s bamboo wall of repression" remains.
This past Christmas in 2002 soldiers blared threats to Montagnard Christians using megaphones - “If you celebrate Christmas we will arrest you.” Soldiers even threatened to shoot them on the spot.
What is even more sinister however, is that Western governments and Japan continue to support Vietnam through financial aid and trade agreements. The European Union recently granted millions of dollars of aid to Vietnam - with no strings attached. Last year In the United States, Senator John Kerry brought a terrible shame on America's Congress as he prevented the Vietnam Human Rights Act from being voted on in the Senate. (The House of Representatives voted 410-1 in its favor).
On October 29,2002 three Christian Montagnards were given lethal injections in their prison cells. They died in convulsing spasms. One was a Christian preacher named Y-Het Nie Kdam. The other two are Y-Suon Mlo and Y- Wan Ayun.
Today however, it is the entire Montagnard race that is hanging on the cross facing execution. And Vietnam is not alone in this tyranny but Western governments and Japan who collude with Hanoi’s butchers are also shamefully guilty. We shall soon see if these governments and people like Senator John Kerry will – like Pontius Pilate - try to wash their hands of this genocidal crime against the Montagnards.