STATEMENT AT ROME JUNE 2003

Ladies and Gentlemen:

At the outset, I would like to thank Daniele Capezzone, Matteo Mecacci and all TRP and “Radicali Italiani” members for making it possible for me to be with you here today. I am very happy to be with the organization and people like you who have compassionate hearts and are willing to support and assist me and my organization in pursuing better living conditions for the Degar people in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. And, most of all, I am very proud and honored to be a member of the General Council of the TRP.

The Degar people have cried out to the world since 1958 after France left Indochina in 1955, but there has been no one who would pay attention to our cry until 2001. Our people had first looked up to the French, but after the first Vietnam War the French left us to the hands of South Vietnam. After the second Indochina War, our people had also looked up to the United States, but what happened was that we were left to the bloody hands of Communist Vietnam.

After the peaceful demonstrations of our people in early February of 2001, the Transnational Radical Party was the only NGO who dared to accredit me to speak at the press conference at the Sub-Commission of Human Rights in Geneva that was organized by my Vietnamese friends Mr. Vo Van Ai and Ms. Penelope Faulkner.

In April 2002, the Transnational Radical Party invited and accredited me to speak at the Commission on Human Rights. At this time, the Vietnamese Delegation accused me of being hired by the United States CIA and of being a terrorist. I can never thank the Transnational Radical Party leaders enough, and especially my friend, and our common leader Marco Pannella, for being so courageous in taking the heat on my behalf to face the Vietnamese government in front of the United Nations NGOs Committee in New York.

Since the Vietnamese government accused me of being a terrorist, I have now a few questions that I want to ask them and the whole world.

1. Have I killed any Vietnamese civilians, soldiers or police?

2. Have I imprisoned or tortured any Vietnamese civilians, soldiers or police?

3. Where is my army and where are my prison camps?

4. How much of the Vietnamese land in Hanoi or in Ho Chi Minh City have my people invaded? Have we relocated the ethnic Vietnamese away from their ancestral lands by force?

5. How many of the Vietnamese women have I forced or coerced into being sterilized?

The answer to these questions is no! What has happened in Vietnam is just the opposite!
In fact, all these things and violence have been used by the Vietnamese regime to terrorize our people. The Vietnamese government, since 1975, has murdered and imprisoned hundreds of thousands of our people by their soldiers and police. They accused us of being the ears and eyes for the US Armed Forces during the Vietnam War. Thousands of our villages have been relocated in order to make room for the millions of ethnic Vietnamese to occupy our ancestral lands in the Central Highlands. After our people’s peaceful demonstration in February of 2001, over 300 of our people have been arrested, tortured and imprisoned. Hundreds of our people have disappeared and some of them have been executed by the soldiers; thousands of our women have been forced or coerced into being sterilized against their will.

Ladies and Gentlemen, who is the real terrorist?
The Vietnamese regime continues to persecute us for being Christians.
Both the US State Department and Human Rights Watch report the existence of “official policies” where authorities force us to actually drink animal blood while renouncing Christ.
Human Rights Watch reported in April 2002:
“Confidential government directives issued between 1999 and 2001 show a centrally directed campaign and special bureaucratic infrastructure to target and suppress Christians in ethnic minority areas in the northern and western highlands”. I also want to say something about what the Vietnamese government had charged the Degar prisoners for their  involvement in demonstration 2001

1. First, the Vietnamese government charged our people for illegally cross the border.
   In response to this accusation: After the peaceful demonstration in 2001, hundreds of our people who were  involved with the demonstrations were arrested, tortured and imprisoned by the Vietnamese Government. Our  people ran across the border to escape being captured by the Vietnamese police forces who, then, protest  that they crossed the border illegally. How about the thousands of ethnic Vietnamese who have been crossing  the border to Laos and Cambodia everyday? What has the Vietnamese government charged them with?

2.  Second, the Vietnamese government charged our people of leading the way for other Degars to cross the  border.
   
   In response to this accusation, I must say that I don’t know if this charge makes any sense to the international community, according to international law, but in any case, it doesn’t make any sense to me  at all. Vietnam does not want our people to leave the place where they are being repressed. Crossing the  border with Cambodia makes exterminating our people more complicated, I suppose. Apparently, trying to  save your own life – for a Degar— is a crime in Vietnam and in Cambodia even if these countries are bound  to respect this fundamental right. When our people run for their lives, away from Vietnam’s genocidal  policies, the Vietnamese government says our people have violated their law.
   
   I am not, and the Degar people who fight for their own rights are not, what the Vietnamese government says that we are. I am simply the founder and president of the Montagnard Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of the Degar race, and an organization that has been recognized  and granted tax-exempt status by the Federal Government of the United States of America. Besides this, I  have been elected as member of the General Council of the Transnational Radical Party, and more recently, I  have been elected a member of Board of Directors of Hands off Cain.
   I am not fighting for independence or a separate state from Vietnam. I am simply fighting for the Degar peoples’ human, civil and political rights, the respect of our indigenous rights and for the Vietnamese Government to respect international law. I do not deny that I would love to see our homelands returned to us, but that is not my fight. We are calling on the international community for the respect of its own laws to stop the extermination of the Degar people which is our imminent problem.
   
   The only weapon that we have today in our hands for our fight is Non-violence. As my fellow radical Marco Pannella says:” We are armed of non-violence”. We will use non-violence to let the international community know the terrible conditions, in which the  Montagnard people are living under the dictatorship of Hanoi. I am convinced that, and I want to announce it here, that with the help of democratic Governments and the  international Community, the strength of the truth of the Montagnard and of all non-violent people will  prevail against dictatorships, and democracy and freedom will be a reality also in Vietnam. Ladies and Gentlemen, friends, comrades, today the Montagnard people are not neither angry nor scared, we  do not hate neither the Vietnamese Communist Government nor the Vietnamese people, otherwise, we state our firm belief in the strength of the truth, because we know that, thanks to non-violence, the truth of the  repressions, violence and deaths suffered by the Montagnard people will come out and be known all over the  world.

Lastly, I want to let you know that the “Radical” community in the United States is growing rapidly. More  than 250 Montagnard people living in North Carolina are already members of the TRP and when the new  refugees will find a job, hundreds more will become members of the TRP. The Montagnards in the US are  joining the TRP because they believe in non-violence and they trust your history and tradition of campaigns  to protect human rights all over the world and really support the campaign for a World Democracy  Organization. The same thing, on a broader scale, is happening in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, even  though the communication with them is very difficult. Dozens of thousands of Montagnards in the Central  Highlands are ready to use non-violence and to join the TRP.

We must continue to work together for our common hopes and ideas of freedom, democracy and happiness to  become a reality; we have indeed achieved important results, but many more are just in front of us.

Thank you for your attention to my words and may God bless you.