Ladies and Gentlemen: 

For thousands of years the Montagnard / Degar people have lived on their lovely homeland which is now called the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Our people have never cried out to the world because of our sufferings of need and brutality of harsh treatment until after the Communist government of Vietnam invaded our homeland in 1975. 

The first thing the Vietnamese Communist government did after they took over the Central Highlands in 1975 they arrested most of the Montagnard who have some degree of education, who served the former South Vietnamese government and who served in the US Armed Forces sent them to prison to be rotten and died or executed them on spot. Among them my uncle Ksor Rot who used to be a former South Vietnamese senator was executed right after he was arrested in his hometown of Ceo-Reo.

They confiscated all of our people's properties and deprived them of their right to their ancestral lands. They also moved our people from their good farmland and placed them on the land that has poor soil in order to make room for the new Vietnamese settlers. 

The Montagnard people are not traders so they do not sell their produces but to give away to their neighbors relatives who are in need. They are farmers and they carefully select their farmland big enough to raise their families throughout the year. Madame Chair, it is obvious that their farmland is their life. They cannot live without their farmland just like human being cannot live without the air. 

Since 1975 the Communist government of Vietnam has confiscated all of our people's farmland and all of our rights have been deprived. Our people don't even have right to pick up firewood for cooking. But the government has the right to destroy our rain forests which our people has been taking care for thousands of years for logging business and plantations. At the present time, the Montagnard people is among the poorest indigenous people in South East Asia and our children have been suffered malnutrition. 

Therefore, on behalf of the Montagnard people and children, I earnestly ask the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues to convince all the democratic government who have been aiding Vietnam to put pressure on the Vietnamese government to respect our people basic human rights and the rights to our ancestral lands. The Montagnard people put their trust on this great forum to help them to co-exist with the Vietnamese people in peace and freedom and enjoy all that God has created for mankind. 

Thank you

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