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MONTAGNARD FOUNDATION
RELEASES 2004 ANNUAL HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT: VIETNAMESE GOVERNMENT CONTINUES
PERSECUTION OF THE MONTAGNARD DEGAR PEOPLES
For the last 3 years the Vietnamese communist government has
maintained the imposition of martial law and repressive paramilitary
operations against the Montagnard Degar people who reside in large parts of
Vietnam’s central highlands. The Montagnard Foundation Inc.’s (MFI) annual
report documents the systematic repression of our indigenous peoples who are
persecuted for their Christian faith and for their desire to end the
government’s repressive policies against them. The report covers in great
detail specific human rights violations, which represents just an example of
the real situation in the region considering that there is not a free flow of
information from the Central Highlands to other parts of Vietnam and to the
outside world. The human rights abuses and crimes include: 13 killings and
summary executions, hundreds of imprisonments, disappearances and tortures, 3
rapes, thousands of coerced or forced sterilizations, organized religious
persecution and the widespread expropriation of the Montagnard peoples’
ancestral lands.
The Montagnard Degar Peoples are one of the oldest races of indigenous people
in South East Asia. However, the last 28 years of persecution by the Communist
Government of Vietnam has resulted in our proud peoples being stripped of
their ancestral lands while being condemned to a life of poverty. For
practicing Christianity our people are severely persecuted, tortured and even
murdered by the Vietnamese authorities. Our refugees who try fleeing to
Cambodia are being hunted down like animals by Vietnamese police and army
units.
Of urgent concern is that the Vietnamese government has continued to defy the
United Nations, namely the 2002 Concluding Observations of the Human Rights
Committee regarding the “serious violations” (UN doc: CCPR/C/SR.2031)
confronting our people (and the several requests made by the European
Commission) by refusing international human rights monitors from having access
into the Central Highlands.
It is the Montagnard Foundation’s belief that the ongoing years of repression
against our people amounts to an ongoing genocide and we vow to continue the
peaceful struggle for our persecuted brothers and sisters inside Vietnam until
the Vietnamese government ceases repressing our people for practicing
Christianity and that our rights as indigenous people are protected according
to international standards, bringing freedom and democracy to all the people
who live in Vietnam.
Kok Ksor, President of the Montagnard Foundation states;
“The Montagnard Degar people are pleading
for international protection and monitoring presence in the central highlands
of Vietnam to protect the Montagnard Christians and common villagers who are
currently suffering terrible human rights abuses by Vietnam’s security
forces.”
Click
here to view the full Report
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