Spartanburg, December 3, 2003 Hon. Peter Leuprecht UN Special Representative, Cambodia.

Attached: Story of Huu – a 5 year old Montagnard Christian refugee boy who was left to die in the Cambodian jungle after being forced to watch his father being tortured and forcibly repatriated back into the hands of Vietnamese authorities.

Re: OPEN LETTER TO UN SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE PETER LEUPRECHT on the need TO END THE payment of BOUNTIES FOR MONTAGNARD CHRISTIAN REFUGEES BY VIETNAM AND ENSURE UNHCR CAN OPERATE FREELY IN CAMBODIA ACCORDING TO THE 1951 CONVENTION ON REFUGEES

Dear Mr. Lueprecht:

I write to you with the utmost respect and convey this letter from my heart and from the voices of thousands of our people who reside in the Central Highlands of Vietnam and Eastern Cambodia.

My reason for this plea is to seek help for our people – the indigenous hill tribes of Central Vietnam (Degar people) also known under the French name of “Montagnards”, who, over the last two years, have been fleeing repression in Vietnam in the thousands ending up as refugees in Cambodia.

The goal of the organization I founded some 10 years ago, the Montagnard Foundation inc. (MFI), and of the Montagnards who support it, is to obtain by the Vietnamese and Cambodian authorities the full respect of human rights and to live on our ancestral lands in Vietnam and Eastern Cambodia without fear of repression. We are an indigenous people recognized by the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations, who desire to preserve our ancestral customs and villages.

MFI is an organization based on the non-violent principles of Christianity and the methods used by Gandhi. We have been portrayed as secessionists, but there is no word for “independence” in our languages, we only have a word for “freedom”. Contrary to the propaganda by the Vietnamese government we are not advocating independence but only seeking the freedom to live on our ancestral lands as indigenous people and to worship Christ in peace

As you may be aware, our people have suffered greatly over the years. Let me refer to the famous anthropologist Dr. Gerald Hickey who identified that over 200,000 Montagnards died in the Vietnam War and that 85% of our villages were destroyed- about one quarter of our entire population. Since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, we have faced a systematic policy by the Vietnamese government involving widespread violations of our basic human rights.

In April 2002, Human Rights Watch produced a comprehensive 194 page report about us entilted “Repression of Montagnards” where the opening press release stated: The Montagnards have been repressed by Vietnam for decades. This has got to stop.”
Recently the European Parliament stated in its November 2003 Resolution on Vietnam that it:
Strongly condemns the new and more serious wave of repression of the religious freedom of the UBCV and of the Christian Montagnards in Vietnam and the deliberate policy of the Vietnamese regime of eliminating non-recognised Churches, especially the UBCV;
Calls on the Vietnamese authorities to halt immediately the policies of repression of the UBCV, the Catholic Church, Montagnard Christian groups and Hoa Hao Buddhists and to adopt without delay all the reforms necessary to guarantee all these churches legal status;
As you surely know, one of the reasons for this repression is that over 40,000 of our people served as allies to the United States during the Vietnam War and that Hanoi wanted revenge against us after the war. Another reason for persecuting us is that the Vietnamese government wants to exploit our ancestral lands in the same manner as indigenous people all over the world have found their land and culture stolen from them. As for our once great forests it is too late as they have been logged by the Vietnamese military..

The Vietnamese government has demonstrated clearly they have little regard for us - particularly those of us who are Christians. Today our villages are under martial law and Vietnamese security forces conduct rampant human rights abuses and a policy of Christian religious persecution. Every week we receive reports direct from Vietnam where our people describe beatings, electric shock torture, arrests, and even murders conducted by Vietnamese authorities. Over 1,000 Montagnards women have reported to us they have been either forced or coerced to sterilization and we have hundreds of villages yet to be accounted for. We believe these human rights abuses are part of a sophisticated form of genocide directed against our people.

To escape this unbearable situation, thousands of our people have fled to neighboring Cambodia, where some camps were established. These camps have were unfortunately closed down in 2002, and hundreds of our peoples have been forced to hide in the jungle, while both Vietnamese and Cambodian police hunt them down.

In a public letter on 21 July 2003 Mr Son Chhay a Member of the Cambodian Parliament called on the President of the National Assembly, Cambodian Prince Norodom Ranariddh to investigate and put an end to these human rights violations. Mr. Son Chhay also confirmed that the Vietnamese government is offering Cambodian authorities bounties of $66 each for turning over our refugees to Vietnamese authorities. He also received reports that Montagnard corpses were found floating with their hands tied in the Se-San River in June 2003. Human Rights Watch also reported Montagnard refugees being shot, and that one was killed after having his skull crushed after arrest by Vietnamese police this year.

Thanks to the support of the Transnational Radical Party – an NGO in Consultative Status with the UN Economic and Social Council - we have been able to be represented at the UN Human Rights Commission in 2002 and 2003, where I was able to expose these serious human rights abuses. In July 2002 the 75th session Human Rights Committee responded to some of TRP concerns, with its Concluding Observations on Vietnam (UN doc: CCPR/C/SR.2031) recommending that human rights monitors be allowed into the central highlands. Point 19 states:

19. While noting that the State party denies any violation of the Covenant rights in this respect, the Committee remains concerned at the abundance of information regarding the treatment of the Degar (Montagnard) indicating serious violations of article 7 and 27 of the Covenant. The Committee is concerned at the lack of specific information concerning indigenous peoples, especially the Degar (Montagnard), and about measures taken to ensure that their rights under article 27 to enjoy their cultural traditions, including their religion and language, as well as their agricultural activities, are respected. The State party should take immediate measures to ensure that the rights of members of indigenous communities are respected. Non-governmental organisations and other human rights monitors should be granted access to the central highlands.

Despite all this, the Government of Vietnam continues to persecute our people and keeps the region sealed off from independent monitors. In April 2003 Human Rights Watch again reported an “escalation of repression”, and released “secret” Vietnamese government documents ordering this repression. In May 2003, the US International Commission For Religious Freedom stated, “the increased repression of religious freedom has been reportedly sanctioned at the highest levels of the Vietnamese government.” In December 2002 Amnesty International also reported on the persecution of our refugees in a report “No Sanctuary: Plight of the Montagnard Minority” ASA 41/011/2002.

In June and July 2003, the TRP sent a delegation to Cambodia, who raised the issue of the refugee camps in a meeting with Prime Minister Hun Sen and entertained meetings with UNHCR Representatives as well as European diplomats to address the lack of compliance with the 1951 Convention on Refugees. All parties showed their interest in a swift resolution of the issue.

On behalf of the Montagnard Foundation, I invite you to include talks on the issue of the Montagnrds in your work in Cambodia and thank you in advance for any assistance you will be able to provide for our people who are in dire need of help in the jungle.

In the spirit of Christianity I also extend our prayers to you and even to the Vietnamese and Cambodian authorities, hoping they may show some compassion for our people.

I thank you and on behalf of the Montagnard Degar people, and again extend our gratitude for any assistance you may provide our people.

At the end of this letter I have also attached one of the many recent examples of what has happened to our refugees, who are suffering on the Cambodian border with Vietnam – the story of a 5-year old Montagnard boy who was left to die by Vietnamese police last year after he witnessed his father being tortured.

Sincerely,



Kok Ksor

THE STORY OF A DEGAR FAMILY WHO ESCAPED THE PERSECUTION OF THE VIETNAMESE GOVERNMENT BY FLEEING TO CAMBODIA AND ARE NOW LIVING IN THE UNITED STATES

The Unyielding Torture of the Vietnamese Government toward My Family

My name is Ksor H’Col, was born in 1960 and my husband Hir was born in 1959. We have five children:

1. Ksor Ken was born in 1980

2. Ksor H’Can was born in 1987

3. Ksor H’Hau was born in 1990

4. Ksor Huu was born in 1996

5. Ksor Maikon was born in 2002

My family has always had the passion to be God's hands and feet, which also led us to having zeal for the welfare of our people. Because of the pain of persecution and torture that my people have been and are facing from the government of Vietnam, my family decided to take a stand with all of our heart and might hoping to see a change. There has always been some sort of persecution towards my family line, but after February of 2001 the affliction became unbearably severe. Still, this was the time that my family and I worked for God the hardest of our lives.

My Husband and I, like a routine, always split up to form into groups going in different directions with other people to expedite our mission in telling people about our Lord Jesus Christ. While sharing the Word and the Good News, we also encouraged our people to believe that there is still hope for us to be free from daily torture and persecution.

My life has always been filled with sadness and sorrow because of the state that my people and I are in, but I thank the Lord for allowing the burden for my people's freedom to exist in me. It is a motivation to strive for a change for my family and my people. Our people have cried out to the world for help since the French left Indochina in 1955, but no one had heard our cry until 2001. After our people’s peaceful demonstration in early February of 2001, my family could no longer bear the harsh persecution of the Vietnamese government any more.

After our people’s peaceful demonstration, the officers from town arrested my husband and took him to the police station. While he was there, my husband was strangled and choked to the point of unconsciousness. Then, they kept him there for some weeks before they dismissed him home. When he was sent home, he was bed ridden from being severely tortured, beaten, and shocked with Vietnamese electric shock treatments. He could not even eat solid food nor could he walk; nevertheless, outside of our house, officers constantly swarmed around us, asking if he were well enough to go back with them to do more "business" work.

What they did to my husband was not enough; they then took my oldest son, Ken, and beat him to the point where he was half dead. When he returned home, his arm was broken and his head was severely swollen from being beaten so badly. Two of my daughters, H’Hao and H’Can, attended the same school in the Central Highlands. They were both were harassed and taunted by the Vietnamese students and even their Vietnamese teachers. H’Hao, the younger one, was beaten by the Vietnamese students and chased home; They will not allow her to ever come back to school. Because of these unyielding spiritual and physical persecutions, my husband and I decided to plan for our escape to Cambodia.

During our ongoing missions, my husband and I had to leave our children at home, entrusting them into the hands of the Lord. And when we were home, the officers from town regularly summoned and questioned us. There were many times when we'd come home bringing with us some sort of scars, whether emotionally or physically from some sort of beatings or threats.

When we finally began our escape, our oldest son Ken had to leave first. The rest of us left in two groups. My husband and my youngest son Huu were in one vehicle and me and my two daughters were in a different transport vehicle. We started riding away from our house, but as we got just a couple of meters away from the police station, I heard that my husband and my son had fallen off their vehicle. Our driver could not stop for them because it was too dangerous to stop so close to the police station so from that point on, I was separated from my little son and my husband.

In the forest, my daughters and I walked day and night to keep up with the group. We did not have anything to eat, all we did was walk. I was pregnant with Maikon Ksor, my youngest child at that time. We did not know what else to do but walk onward and pray and fast, which was easy since there was not any food to begin with. Day in and day out, I did not hear anything about my husband and little son. One day I was told that they been captured. I tried to keep my mind on the hope for our freedom and talking to the Lord was the only distraction from my suffering. As weeks passed by, we finally got to Cambodia. Seven months passed before we were finally reunited with my oldest son, Ken. Then Michael came into the world, a world of a broken family and pain. He was brought into this world in hardship and poverty, for I could not produce any milk for him due to my own malnutrition. In our times of destitution, grief, and pain while living in the refugee camp in Rattanakiri province of Cambodia, we turned to each other and to God for the courage to live on.

Many more months passed and then we were relocated here in the United States. Living here in America, my family and I devoted our time to God and prayed for my husband and my son, and everyone back home – for God's grace and mercy to hear their cries. After six months, I received news that my husband had been sentenced to a dark room. He is crippled from the waist down and he can no longer see. Then I was told a story about a child, a boy living in Cambodia without a mother and a father. He had been crying for his mother and father. They told me that he cried all day and night for his father. Then, after a month or so, they discovered that the boy was my own son Huu. Through God's grace and mercy and the UNHCR staff and the US Embassy in Cambodia, he was sent to me in the United States of America. Now, son and mother are finally reunited. He was so traumatized that he had forgotten that I was his mother. He called me his aunt instead of his mother for a couple of days. It was very painful to hear my own son call me aunt.

What happened that day we fled our village was that when my husband and my son fell off the car, they could not pass the check point so they went back to the village. After staying for a while in the village, they tried to make their trip to Cambodia again in hope that they might join us there. But, unluckily, my husband was arrested by the Vietnamese security forces in Cambodia and taken back to Vietnam. The security officials just left my son in the jungle to die. But God was with him. My son wandered in the jungles of Cambodia and finally ended up in a foster home in a village close by.

What is even more excruciating is to hear my son now say "mom, I saw father hurt, they beat him and tied him up, mom". He described to me how he saw his father being brutally beaten and how they would not let him (my son) go to his father, but only allowed him to watch how they brutally tortured his father. While they were pulling my husband farther and farther away, my son sobbed and cried out for his father, but his father could not get to him. So they both were crying for each other so bitterly.

Later, I was told that my son lived in a foster home in a village in Cambodia where he cried all day and night. Wailing in the night, my son cried for his father and mother. He cried for food, but food never came to him. He cried for his mother, but his mother never came to him. But mostly, he cried for his father. He cried day and night but all he saw was the picture of how the Vietnamese security had tortured and dragged his father away from him.

While in the foster home, my son developed a rash on his head causing his hair to fall off, due to lack of food and nutrients. As I look at my son now, I think to myself, Huu, my dear son; he has tasted unspeakable pain and misery even at the age of six. He has been put onto the same path, the same footsteps as I have unwillingly, uncontrollably, and so will every Montagnard till that day comes, the day of being free. Oh, what a wonderful day it will be when we have our freedom back and the right to use our ancestral lands as we please.

This is my pain and agony then, but even to this day, I can still feel it for it still happens. Back home, we were physically tortured, beaten, and crippled leading to psychological trauma. But here, my family suffers emotional pain, misery, and depression. We neither fully live nor die. We are just here, just waiting for that day.