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[vietnamese propaganda] An open letter
to Ksor Kok
08/06/2004 | VNA | VIETNAM |
http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn/2004-06/05/Stories/26.htm
Learning centre: Students attend classes at the newly established
Tay Nguyen University. VNA/VNS Photo Dinh Na
Dear Ksor Kok,
Middle-aged people such as myself are not familiar with your name.
It was only after the April 10 incident that I spoke to Ja Duk, the former
"deputy prime minister" of FULRO* who now serves as deputy chairman of the
Lam Dong Provincial Fatherland Front, and learned that you were once a
bodyguard for Y Bham (a founder of FULRO) and fled to the United States.
Regrettably, you have been away from your country and your home village
for so long about 40 years that you do not know about the great
changes that have occurred in your absence.
In particular, you have not received any accurate information about life
in Tay Nguyen (the Central Highlands) since April 30, 1975.
The elderly and middle-aged, such as your former teacher Ja Duk, have
lived through two regimes the US-backed Sai Gon regime and the socialist
regime and are well aware of the differences.
I'll tell you something you're probably not aware of: before 1975 there
was only one high school in all of Dac Lac Province but now all of its 18
districts have their own high school and a boarding school for ethnic
minority children.
The Gia Rai language and English are now taught in all junior secondary
schools in Ya Tul Commune, where your native village of A Yun Pa is
located.
All districts in the five Tay Nguyen provinces have sealed roads to their
towns and gravel roads to their communes.
Almost 100 per cent of villages have electricity. Since the E De and Gia
Rai shifted from a monoculture of terraced rice fields to wet rice and
long-term cash crops, their families now earn hundreds of millions of dong
each year and harvest dozens of tonnes of rice.
The wooden churches of the Ba Na and Xe Dang people of Kon Tum and of the
E De people in Buon Ma Thuot have been repaired and give them beautiful
and magnificent places for their weekly religious services.
In 1954, many patriots who had only reached high school under the French
were rewarded with high positions in the State [in Ha Noi], such as the
Gia Rai men Nay Der, Nay Phin and Y Kso Ni, and E De men Y Wang Mlo Duol
Dur and Y Bi Ale O.
Before liberation in 1975, the State trained a generation of ethnic
minority intellectuals in Ha Noi, including the E De men Professor Y Nue
Buon Krong, Y Tlam and People's Teacher Y Ngong Nie Kdam, and Gie Trieng
man Dr So Lay Tang.
Since then, hundreds of ethnic minority university graduates have taken up
important posts in Central Highlands provinces.
Less than 30 years after liberation in 1975, four E De people have
received PhDs and many Gia Rai and Ba Na people have masters' degrees, and
they are all contributing to development in their region.
Before 1975, the people of Tay Nguyen could only have dreamed of this.
These results are primarily due to the policies of the Socialist Republic
of Viet Nam towards development in ethnic minority areas, and secondly to
the help of the entire community living in Tay Nguyen and the efforts of
your ethnic group to improve their own lives.
What have you done lately?
Have you done any good deeds for your family, for A Yun Pa Village or for
your ethnic group as a whole over the past 40 years?
Or have you brought more suffering to your people through your actions, by
instigating them to give up their work in the middle of watering and
weeding to follow you and your henchmen in the so-called "struggle for
rights" that is nothing more than a trick to satisfy your thirst to lead
and the thirst of those who are greedy for wealth and power but don't want
to work for it?
In the past, two big, imperialist powers, France and the United States,
sent men, material and money to wage wars of aggression against our
country but failed miserably.
As for you at your age, with your low level of education and your
complete ignorance of your homeland what could you achieve?
As a man who constantly boasts about "defending the interests of ethnic
minority groups", do you really want to continue spilling blood and
depriving your people of the right to live in peace and prosperity and
depriving their children of the right to enter secondary schools and
universities after so many years of war?
You always boast about being a highlander, so why are you so ignorant of
the traditions of Tay Nguyen that bind our people together in unity?
According to the rules of the Gia Rai people in Cheo Reo, your homeland,
there are strict penalties for those who disturb order and sow confusion
in their families and communities did you not know or have you
forgotten?
Culture shock
You used to claim that you defend the identities of ethnic minorities in
Tay Nguyen, so why is your "Degar Protestantism" encouraging your people
to give up their cultural traditions?
Who are you to dare say that the belief that everything has its own soul
and our grandparents' practice of worshipping Yang are not humanist?
What spiritual support have the highlanders relied on for time immemorial,
thanks to which we are now masters of an original and rich terraced-field
culture?
Perhaps you are ignorant of the elements making up our national culture?
I agree that we are free to worship Jesus, Allah, Buddha or Yang.
But why has your self-made "Degar Protestantism" called for the
destruction of our liquor jars and our gongs, which express the unique
spiritual voice of Tay Nguyen?
Are you aware that four pieces of gong music and the k'ut songs of the E
De were listed as the cultural heritage of the region by the Asia-Pacific
Music Forum in 1991?
Is it because you have been too far from home for too long, eating and
drinking nothing but foreign food and wine, that you can no longer hear
the sound of the Cu Mo mountains and jungles or the A Yun Pa River in the
beats of the A Rap gongs or enjoy the strange, bittersweet taste and
enticing aroma of ruou can (liquor fermented with leaves and drunk from a
jar through straws)?
For the people of Tay Nguyen, these are our flesh and blood!
Stop dreaming !
The Vietnamese Government has spent billions of dong, not only to raise
the standard of living in Tay Nguyen but also to maintain the cultural
identities of its people through gong and folk-art festivals, elephant
races, rice-eating rituals, brocade-making and recording its oral epics.
How dare you a child who has abandoned his ami (mother) and his homeland
in self-imposed exile for 40 years, who has broken the Toloi bhian rules
of his people shamelessly call upon your people to give up their
traditional culture?
The intellectuals of Tay Nguyen are proud of their heritage and traditions
and are making a living with their own hands and minds in their homeland,
and we advise you against feeding yourself on the illusion of acquiring
omnipotent power in the highlands and warn you not to waste the money and
energy of your people.
Let our beloved Tay Nguyen people live in peace, equality and happiness.
If you earn some money through your own labour, send it home to help your
ami live the rest of her life in peace.
We wish you good health after the incident in which Central Highlanders
living in the United States overturned and burnt your car. Try to reread
the rules of the Gia Rai so you will again know how to live in harmony
with our community's traditions.
Yours,
Linh Nga
Linh Nga Nie Kdam, a member of the E De ethnic minority group, lives in
Dac Lac Province where she is a well-known musician, writer and
researcher. Her letter was originally published in the Lao Dong (Labour)
newspaper.
* The United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races (FULRO) was
formed in 1965 to create a separatist Degar State in Viet Nams Tay
Nguyen.
VNS
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