Pre-1800 For over two thousand years – prior to the year 1800, we the Degar people lived freely and peacefully in our homelands of highland villages. We were free to farm, hunt, travel and to settle in our villages, free to believe and to worship as we wished. We were free to live and to die in peace until outsiders came to our homeland. Even the Chams who had invaded our northern coastal areas of Danang in 875 dared not venture into our Central Highlands. Our southern coastal region too remain untouched until after the Annam destroyed the Cham kingdom in 1471 and forced them to flee south to Bien Hoa and Cambodia in 1697     1815 The European presence started in the Central Highlands when Father Buzumi, an Italian, and Father Carvalho, a Portuguese, both from the Jesuit mission in Macao, landed at Danang (Tourane). Later, Catholic missionaries established a mission at Kontum, in the heart of the Central Highlands. They were the first outsiders to set foot on our lands.     1876 The French began to explore our homelands beginning in the territory of the Sedang tribe of Kontum Province in the north, the Rhade tribe of Daklak Province in the west, and in the south from Saigon to the Chrau tribe regions.           1883 The French completed their conquest of Vietnam and began to move into the Central Highlands. When they first arrived in our mountain country in 1890, our people trusted the French and believed they would help them get back their coastal lands, which were taken by the Annam people. Most of our people welcomed them into our territories with open arms except for a few tribes that resisted this encroachment. After pacifying the Degar peoples, the French however, organized our diverse tribes into a cohesive political unit and gave us the name “Montagnard People of South Indochina.”       1895 The French began their active colonization in our homeland. A small military administrative post was established at Ban Don on January 31, 1899. On November 2, 1899, the French created the autonomous administration for the Montagnard people at the province of Daklak in the country of the Rhade tribe. At this time, there was no Vietnamese living in our territories. It was 1918 when the French first introduced Vietnamese to our Central Highlands by way of their Vietnamese servants.            1914 - 1929 Leopold Sabatier was assigned to Daklak Province and he began to launch ambitious development plans of the highlands. He built the town of Banmethuot, established schools, health services, agricultural services, and arranged the construction of roads, bridges, and airstrips.         1930 Ho Chi Minh formed the Indochinese Communist Party, dedicated to the overthrow of French imperialism. This movement spawned the Pathet Lao in Laos and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.       1946 The French High Commissioner, George D’Argenlieu, signed the Ordinance of May 27 creating the Federal Government for the Montagnard people of South Indochina.(See appendix A , the Federal Ordinance of May 27, 1946). At this time, our people were filled with joy and great expectations because we believed that the French were going to build our country and teach us to run our own government. Unfortunately, it was not to be and our people were recruited to serve in the French army - to only protect colonialist interests in Southeast Asia.          1950 The Central Highlands were designated The Crown Domain of the Southern Highlanders Country and put directly under the control of Bao Dai, the last king of the Vietnamese to rule the court of Hue. On May 21, 1951, Bao Dai created a special statute guaranteeing the Degar “free evolution in accordance with our traditions and customs.” (See appendix B , a special statute of May 21, 1951). The French however, never consulted the Montagnard people when they submitted these lands to the control of Bao Dai. At this time our people could not resist this encroachment due to the domination by the French authorities. Degar lands were thus taken away and given to Bao Dai. Thousands of our young men also died in the French war, fighting the Viet Minh, Laotians, Cambodians, and Siamois. France would lose the war with Viet Minh and we would never understand why they let the encroaching Vietnamese destroy our people and homeland.        1954 The Viet Minh defeated the French, and Vietnam was divided at the 17th parallel. Ho Chi Minh assumed leadership in the North, and Bao Dai assumed leadership in the South. In the general election of 1955, Ngo Dinh Diem was elected the first president of the Republic of South Vietnam. Diem then merged the Central Highlands illegally into South Vietnam by force. The Diem regime committed this seizure unopposed by other governments. Diem’s government also classified the Degar people as ethnic minorities in our own homeland in order to deprive us of human rights and rights to our land. Further they would begin to annihilate our people.          1957 Diem launched a land development program that called for the resettling of 850,000 of Vietnamese refugees from the North into the heart of the Degar homeland. We were pushed off our lands. Later, many of these Vietnamese became Viet Cong forces that fought against the U.S. Armed Forces and murdered our innocent Degar people. Diem’s goal was to assimilate the Degar into the Vietnamese cultural sphere by eliminating our tribal courts, prohibiting our languages from school, expropriating our land, and denying us our ethnic identity. They used the word “assimilation” to camouflage the word “genocide.” The government of the United States provided the money for this project (which later became widely recognized as a failure and a culturally devastating policy). From the point of view of the Degar people, Diem’s forces and the Viet Cong created two competing forces, which resulted in a mutually reinforcing plan of genocide towards the Degar people. In self-defense, the Degar people formed the Bajaraka movement (a combination of the key letters of Bahnar, Jarai, Rhade, and Koho) to resist forced assimilation and to stop the genocidal policy of Ngo Dinh Diem. The goal of this movement was to make the P.M.S.I. (Pay Montagnard du Sud Indochinois) a separate nation with its own administration and army.          1958 Under American support and military assistance, Diem crushed the Bajaraka movement and murdered its people. All of its leaders were imprisoned including Y-Bham Enuol, Y-Thih Eban, Y-Ju Eban, Nay Luet and many others. The U.S. government failed to intervene and stop Diem’s government from destroying our people, our villages, our culture and our homelands. The Bajaraka freedom fighters continued to struggle as a guerilla movement underground. Many others were deceived by the promises of Ho Chi Minh into aligning themselves with his cause. The leaders of North Vietnam, including Ho Chi Minh, had promised to return the Degar land to its people. At this time, the leaders of the Degar movement in the jungles such as Nai Der, Nai Phin, R’com Briu, Y-Bih Aleo, Y-Ngong Nie Kdam and many others had no choice but to accept the offer of Ho Chi Minh. Therefore, during the Second Indochina War, Ho Chi Minh had two fronts:  a) Mat Tran Giai Phong Mien Nam Vietnam means “The Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam”.  b)  Mat Tran Giai Phong Tay Nguyen means “The Front for the Liberation of Central Highlands”. Ho Chi Minh deceptively used the Front for the Liberation of Central Highlands (FLCH) to cheat and to force Degar people to follow him against the South Vietnamese. However, despite Ho Chi Minh’s promises, after their victory in 1975, the SRV expropriated the Central Highlands, placing all governance of these Degar homelands under their direct control and authority,instead of giving our lands back to our people as they had promised. The Degar people were denied their right to sovereignty, and were instead brutally oppressed by the Hanoi government. After the victory, most of the Degar leaders who were with Ho Chi Minh since the First and Second Indochina War were sent home for retirement. The reason given was because our leaders did not have the ability to work. The truth is that the government did not want our leaders to claim what Ho Chi Minh had promised them about self-determination and self-rule of our homeland.     1961 The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) recruited the Degar people for a counter-insurgency war against the Viet Cong. Armed, trained and paid by the United States, the Degar people were injected into the middle of the conflict between the Viet Cong and the armies of both South and North Vietnam. Again, the Degar people were promised that they would regain their autonomous state, which had been granted by the French, the first colonizers of our homeland. After the French left Indochina in 1954, most of our young people did not want to join the South Vietnamese army. Further the Diem government had imprisoned our leaders and destroyed our movement for freedom. However, the Central Highlands was an important strategic location during the Vietnam War. The military planning of both sides agreed that, “he who gained the Central Highlands would win the war”. Therefore, most of the big battles took place in the Central Highlands and in turn over 200,000 thousand of our people were killed and 85% of our villages were destroyed during the war.          1964 On September 20,the Degar people launched a military resistance called FULRO (United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races), led by a Rhade, General Y-Bham Eñuol, who was headquartered in Cambodia for security reasons. Mr. Enuol was the first to use our own word “Degar” to describe the name of our people at the Conference of Indochina Peoples at Phnom Penh, Cambodia in 1965. The FULRO’s goals were as follow: The Degar people must be recognized as the legal and true masters of the Central Highlands. The Vietnamese administration of these lands must be dismantled and their military forces withdrawn. The Degar people’s sovereignty and independence must be restored.     1966 The Ministry for Ethnic Minorities Development was organized to oversee social and economic programs for the Degar people. The government reported that, “Some progress was made, but the Vietnam War was spreading throughout the region, which made the South Vietnamese government’s goals unattainable.” The truth is that both North and South Vietnam wanted the Degar people to be destroyed in the war so that they could later take our land unhindered. Though the South Vietnamese government’s actions had indicated a clear predisposition to destroy our people, they continued with false promises for improvements in order to gain Degar support for their war effort.       1975 South Vietnam’s collapse began with the rout of its defenses in the highlands. The war ended on May 1 with the victory of the North Vietnamese, and the Degar people suffered the consequences. Many of the Degar leaders and people were executed because the new government of Vietnam accused us of being the eyes and ears of the U.S. Armed Forces during the war, and also for being members of the FULRO organization. They convicted us as traitors because we were fighting for the U.S. We cannot however, be traitors against the Hanoi government when firstly we are not Vietnamese people. Even today, there are untold numbers of Degar people are still in prison for this reason. In addition, those who are lucky enough to be released die, usually within a year, under mysterious circumstances. It is well known that when a Degar is released from prison, it is the same as a death sentence. After the end of the war, our political and religious leaders, civil servants, former military personnel and students were mercilessly jailed, confined to re-education camps, tortured and executed. Degar women have been raped and forced into prostitution to soldiers of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The public health system has been allowed to deteriorate, and is generally unavailable to Degar families. Tribal law courts have been replaced by a harsh system of “justice”, which is biased against the Degar people. The Socialist Republic of Vietnam has closed all churches, and accused those Degar Christians of working for the CIA. Our children are excluded from higher education, and no schools are provided in areas far from the cities. Degar languages are prohibited in school. Even our graveyards have been desecrated and looted.         Private property and lands have been confiscated and distributed to ethnic Vietnamese. Forced labor and slavery have been imposed on all Degar people, regardless of age or gender. The Degar people have been forcibly evicted from their farmlands and moved to barren soil, which is poor and unsuitable for cultivation. They have been forced to work as slave laborers during the establishment of collective farms, which were then turned over to ethnic Vietnamese. The victors, the ancient enemies of our people, are committed to that same policy of cultural genocide, which once ended the Champa civilization, many years ago. According to the testimony of Michael D. Benge a former P.O.W., and advisor to the South Vietnamese Ministry for Ethnic Minorities before the American Senate Finance Subcommittee on International Trade, the current Vietnamese government is practicing cultural genocide by breaking up the extended families, and placing all of the elders into so called retirement villages, where they have little or no means of support, or access to medicine. Degar farmlands have been taken away, and our people are allowed only a tiny piece of land on which to grow food. All vegetation, from the jungles to the mountains, is being wiped out a thousand times more efficiently by today’s current logging, than during the high point of America’s Agent Orange herbicide program. In 1976, the “Ministry of Culture” of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam announced that it would be “necessary to eradicate all outmoded customs”, changing the culture of ethnic minorities. The program was called Dinh Canh Dinh Cu, which means, “fixed field, fixed residence”. In practice, it meant forcing the indigenous population into small controlled areas of poor croplands so that large numbers of ethnic Vietnamese could be settled on the greater part of Degar lands. Mr. Benge further reports that the Montagnards are not permitted to maintain or construct Christian churches. If they are caught participating in services, they are heavily fined. He cites information that some American officials consider those who have been affiliated with the FULRO movement as terrorists, and decline to process their applications for immigration. They also refuse to qualify the Montagnards for immigration, who have served America for over five years in the Mike Force, Kit Carson Scouts, PRU’s, and the Truong Son Cadre program.These people risked their lives in rescuing pilots, and gathering intelligence that saved hundreds of Americans. For eighteen years, the “Socialist Republic of Vietnam” closed the Central Highlands to all except a relative handful of visitors, and even then, their movements were carefully controlled and monitored by agents of the government. In the spring of 1993, perhaps in response to the meeting of the eleventh session of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous people in June of that year, visitors were again permitted in the Central Highlands. Those few visitors, who decided to test the government’s new policy of openness, were met with omnipresent signs in both Vietnamese and English that “prohibited entry”. Reliable reports from the Central Highlands indicate that only a few hundred thousand of our people remain. These reports also indicate that food is scarce, and there is a severe lack of medical care. With grim determination, the few remnants of our ancient race cling to life defying the murderous intent of the occupying forces on our lands, defying those who are committed to the cultural genocide, in which our people and our culture are diluted by alien influences. We are trapped in the cultural killing fields of the “Socialist Republic of Vietnam”. According to the figures of Dr. Gerald C. Hickey, anthropologist, over 200,000 of the estimated one million Degar populations have been killed, and 85% of their villages have been either destroyed or abandoned. It must, however, be a higher figure than that, because during French colonialism the Degar people were numbered at over 3 million persons, and now our population is around 500,000. Our world has been shattered, and the very existence of our race and culture is threatened. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge have enjoyed similar successes, having executed our leader Y-Bham Enuol with his wife and children, and over 100 of his followers and their wives and children. We are facing literal extinction. We desperately need humanitarian aid and political support to promote our organization in the international community to be able to save our homeland, our culture, and our people. A few of the survivors of these killing fields of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam fled into the jungle after America left Vietnam to continue the fight for the freedom and the independence of the Degar people.       1986 Two hundred FULRO fighters made their way to a Thai refugee camp and eventually were resettled in North Carolina, USA.          1992 Four hundred FULRO fighters and their families contacted the U.N. peacekeeping forces in the Mondulkiri province of Cambodia. With no help from the outside world, they were forced to end their 17-year military struggle. They requested political asylum, handed over their weapons, and accepted resettlement in North Carolina.   From the bottom of our hearts, we would like to express our deep appreciation and thanks to the people and government of the United States for providing a sanctuary for these remnants of our people, who found their way to the shores of our former ally. To those Americans who fought by our side, and to those who are now supporting our humanitarian goals, we wish to say: “Your bravery is only surpassed by your loyalty and compassion”. But, we cannot forget the land on which we were raised, where the remains of our ancestors are mute witnesses to the continued genocide of our brothers and sisters who remain behind, suffering the consequences of a war, whose origins and motives were never clear to them.