The People of Vietnam: Victims of Communism

By Mike Benge
The Washington Times
June 17, 2007

Last Tuesday, June 12, President Bush spoke at the dedication of the Victims of Communism Memorial that honors the memories of those killed in communist regimes. He said their deaths should remind the American public “evil is real and must be confronted.” Ironically, this Friday, June 22, President Bush will honor the president of a tyrannical communist regime that murdered over a million Vietnamese and ethnic minorities with a White House visit during which he has the opportunity to confront that evil.

President Bush at the Victims of
Communism Memorial Dedication.
    
Recently, dozens of democracy activists, journalists, cyber-dissidents and Christian and other religious leaders were arrested and imprisoned by the Vietnamese communists. Congressional leaders and human-rights groups have charged Hanoi with “unbridled human-rights abuses,” the “worst wave of oppression in 20 years.” Those recently arrested are but a few of the hundreds of political and religious prisoners in Vietnam; some have been tried, while those less visible simply “disappeared.” This mounting crackdown is a deliberate diplomatic slap in the face of the United States.
    
Hanoi brazenly aired on TV the kangaroo court trial of Thaddeus Nguyen Van Father Ly, who was muzzled during the proceedings. In Vietnamese, the colloquial phrase for censorship is “bit mieng” — to cover the mouth. The picture of Father Ly’s muzzling seems a literal enactment of an old cliche. Denied representation, Father Ly was sentenced to eight years imprisonment.
    
Mr. Bush’s endorsement for Hanoi’s admission into the World Trade Organization at last year’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Hanoi, the removal of Vietnam from listed as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC), and the granting of Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) were all predicated on the Communist Party substantially improving its human-rights record.
    
It should come as no surprise that after the granting of these privileges, the Vietnamese communists continued and intensified their repression.
    
Though Vietnam professes great strides in religious freedom, one must look under the veneer to seek the truth. For example, in 2006, the Vietnamese government claimed that “25 denominations” had received certificates to carry on religious activities, when in fact they were only individual house churches.
    
The price of these certificates is the surrender of religious freedom. The church must submit to the central Bureau of Religious Affairs (CBA) a list of the names and addresses of members, and only those approved by the CBA can attend services. All sermons must be approved by the CBA, and all sermons, including those of minorities, must be given in Vietnamese. Pastors and priests can neither deviate from the approved sermon nor proselytize, and the CBA police monitor all services.
    
Montagnards, Hmong and other Christians, Khmer Krom Monks, members of the Cao Dai faith, and Hoa Hao are still relentlessly persecuted. This is what Hanoi calls religious freedom, and the U.S. administration was naive enough to believe them and removed them from the Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) list of countries that suppress religious freedom.
    
Recently, the Vietnamese communist regime demanded of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues the cancellation of scheduled films to be screened at the May 22 forum. One film, “Hunted Like Animals,” sponsored by the Hmong-Lao Human Rights Council depicted the genocide against the Hmong, and the other film depicted human-rights abuses against the Khmer Krom by the Vietnamese communists. It should come as no surprise that the United Nations acquiesced to the demands of the repressive Hanoi regime.
    
Reminiscent of the days of slavery in the “Old South,” Montagnards who flee from repression in the Central Highlands are hunted down like wild animals. Vietnam pays bounties to Cambodian police for every Montagnard they catch and turn over to them. Vietnam considers refugees seeking asylum in another country to have violation its national security, punishable by imprisonment for up to 15 years.
    
Recently, three Montagnards were arrested by Cambodian police and charged with “human trafficking” for the so-called crime of aiding other Montagnards to flee the repression in Vietnam via the Montagnards’ “underground railroad.” Although Cambodia does little to stop the trafficking of children for prostitution, the communist regime is prosecuting these Montagnards on Vietnam’s request in hopes it will convince the U.S. it is serious about trafficking. Vietnam pulls the strings of the marionette Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.
    
Reports continue from behind the curtain of silence drawn around the Central Highlands of the torture and deaths of Montagnard Christians. During a February trip to Hanoi, Ellen Sauerbrey, assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, told a press conference that the Vietnamese officials assured her that Montagnards can freely travel to the Embassy in Hanoi or the Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City to voice any grievances. 

 She said Montagnards should stay in Vietnam and not seek asylum in Cambodia. Given the Vietnamese communists history of repression and broken promises, how can Mrs. Sauerbrey be naive enough to believe Montagnards suffering persecution would ever to be allowed through the phalanx of Vietnamese police surrounding the U.S. Embassy and Consulate?
    
As predicted, Hanoi has announced the release of a few token high-profile political prisoners in an attempt to smooth the way for the arrival of Vietnam’s President Triet, and in hopes of placating President Bush, the State Department and Congress. Can this administration be gullible enough to fall for yet another charade by the Vietnamese communists?
    
President Bush, keeping faith in the spirit of the Victims of Communism Memorial that “evil is real and must be confronted,” should demand of Vietnam’s president the release of all of the hundreds of political prisoners including those recently arrested and the more than 350 Christian Montagnards that seem to have been forgotten by this administration. 
    
Though assigned to the State Department and not a combatant, Mike Benge was captured and imprisoned by the communist North Vietnamese during the war in Vietnam.  He served time in the infamous Hanoi Hilton and we are proud at Peace and Freedom to call him a friend.

U.S. State Department: Off Course on Human Rights In Vietnam?

OPEN LETTER TO HUMAN RIGHTS & DEMOCRACY ADVOCATES – PARTICULAR TO THE THOSE INVOLVED WITH REFORMS IN COMMUNIST VIETNAM

Dear fellow activists and supporters:

GRAVE CONCERNS RE: STATE DEPARTMENT (PRM) AND VIETNAM – 6 MAY 2007

I write this letter with grave concerns regarding the US State Department’s policies in dealing with freedom and democracy issues in Vietnam. In particular concerns involving the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) and what appears to be serious problems in their efforts in defending the repressed peoples of Vietnam.

It also appears the PRM and possibly others in the State Dept are adopting the same line as Hanoi in trying to claim that Montagnard human rights problems are caused by the Montagnards themselves.

I write this letter however, not as a representative of the Montagnard Foundation of which I am an advocate for, (I note that the Montagnard Foundation recently welcomed PRM Assistant Secretary Ellen Sauerbrey’s concern in visiting the Central Highlands) but from a personal viewpoint as I felt it necessary to convey these concerns to you, given the serious nature of the information.

This information is as follows:

Recently on April 26, 2007 the NGO Refugees International (RI) highlighted urgent concerns facing Montagnard refugees in a report titled “US Retrenching on Protection of Montagnards”. http://www.refugeesinternational.org/content/article/detail/9989. RI’s concerns are that the State department is retracting on certain protections stating, “The new policy weakens protections for Montagnards, undermines congressional intent, and possibly exposes Montagnards to new problems when forced home. At best they will face additional delay in seeking refugee status.”

I conclude by saying in regards to this policy it appears refugee issues are indeed being undermined by failures to address the real problems inside Vietnam’s central highlands and that both Vietnamese and Cambodian authorities have a documented history of persecuting fleeing refugees including arresting and torturing Montagnard men, women and children.

I also received extremely credible information from numerous sources including those working for the US government that in the past serious infractions have occurred regarding high priority refugee cases in the PRM bureau. The information conveyed to me is that a number of high priority ethnic Vietnamese cases were not acted upon and their paperwork was inadvertently or deliberately lost by the PRM bureau.

In fact subsequent investigation was apparently undertaken in-house and the evidence pointed to the culprit from the PRM desk of an official who is still working on Vietnamese refugee issues, named Pam Lewis.

I write this with the hope that further high priority cases are not neglected and in light that I recently met with the PRM office at the State Department in March 2007, including Pam Lewis and Kathleen Sheehan, who is an assistant to Ellen Sauerbrey. The meeting overall was quite negative.

Both these officials I met with were not particularly sympathetic to Montagnard issues and appeared to not believe that Hanoi was committing serious human rights abuses against Montagnard refugees. They were confrontational in their discussions and both these officials stated openly that the internationally respected NGO Human Rights Watch was not a reliable organization and had been exaggerating human rights violations perpetrated by Vietnamese authorities.

Pam Lewis was particularly confrontational and rude during the meeting and appeared to try to bait myself and other Montagnards present, often presenting reasons why the Montagnards do not deserve attention by the US government.

She, on this and on other occasions made the remark to myself and other Montagnards that “some” Montagnards served with the communists during the Vietnam war, indicating the United States thus did not have any reason to assist Montagnards today or that Montagnards should now stop bothering the US State Department.

One extremely disturbing issue which both Pam Lewis and Kathleen Sheehan stated in the meeting was that they agreed with the policy of communist authorities using some means of control over religious affairs concerning house church Christians. They stated in unison that there was nothing wrong with Vietnamese officials imposing language restrictions on house church prayer meetings.

When we advised them that Vietnamese officials currently force house church Christians to have pictures of Ho Chi Minh in the church and then that they must speak Vietnamese during prayer services (and NOT speak their native language) they both stated, “what’s wrong with that?”

Further discussion on the issue with them indicated they believed there was no reason why Montagnards shouldn’t join the government sanctioned church. They did not or could not see any problems with religious freedoms being impinged upon by officials who enforce language restrictions of prayer meetings. I note however, it is also well documented that Vietnamese officials have a history of enforcing religious laws with arrests and torture. Further citizens of Vietnam should be free to speak whatever language they desire during prayer services.

Kathleen Sheehan also described Ellen Sauerbrey’s recent visit to the Central Highlands and reported that in the seven or eight of the returned refugee’s houses they visited the only problem they encountered was related to “poverty”. The implication was that this is the only problem for the Montagnards in Vietnam which actually neglects the long history of persecution of the Montagnards by the communist government.

I note that the PRM visit did not include visits to see any of the 350 Montagnard prisoners who are rotting in Vietnam’s prisons. I also note the latest State Department Report on Vietnam’s human rights practices released 4 March 2007 reported an extrajudicial killing of a Montagnard man named “Y Ngo Adrong” by security police and also stated “Vietnam continued to impose extra security measures in the central highlands.”

The Montagnard Foundation at this meeting with the PRM Bureau also submitted in writing a proposal offering 200,000 dollars of aid for poverty alleviation for the Montagnard “poorest of the poor”. MFI had raised this amount of money and was asking assistance from the State Department, to which Pam Lewis only rudely scoffed at.

Information on the ground in the refugee centers also indicates things are not much better as James Nach, NGO Liaison Officer, Refugee Resettlement Section, U.S. Consulate, Ho Chi Minh City, once described the Montagnards “as an uneducated bunch who show no effort to educate themselves and when we go out to investigate their complaints, we find there is nothing to it.”

In summary I wish to advise you all of this situation and note the US International Commission of Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has just recommended Vietnam be reinstated on the countries of particular concern watch list (CPC Watch List). The CPC Watch List concerns countries that are the most egregious violators of religious freedom, and I note in particular that the USCIRF is an independent body created by an Act of the US Congress and is not subject to minimalizing the issues due to political concerns or under pressures to grant trade benefits to Vietnam.

In final conclusion I submit that some members of the US State Department simply do not understanding the culture of Montagnard indigenous peoples, namely they do not realize that Montagnards who are struggling against decades of persecution are crying out to help their people, and whether they are house church Christians, Catholics or animists they feel their race and culture is being destroyed.

The Montagnard people like other freedom and democracy advocates in Vietnam are a repressed people and there is a wide body of evidence indicating Vietnam is a known authoritarian state which brutally represses dissent within the country affecting all the country’s citizens both ethnic Vietnamese and Montagnard. Should any members of the State Department challenge these statements, I suggest they do so publicly and thus we can permit a full and open debate on this issue. Those concerned with human rights and these issues should also write to their Senators and Representatives and the State Department.

Regards, Scott Johnson scottj@digisurf.com.au

Vietnam police arrest 1,100 after disco raid

(AFP) HANOI–More than 1,100 youngsters in Vietnam were arrested early Saturday morning following a raid on the biggest disco in Hanoi, state media said.

Hanoi’s notorious New Century club was surrounded by hundreds of police, said the online VNExpress newspaper.

Initial tests showed that at least 500 people had taken drugs. Police found various substances in the club, including heroin and ecstasy pills, it said.

VNExpress said Hanoi police were not aware of the raid, which had been carried out secretly by national police.

National police forces involved in the raid refused to comment.

Ecstasy and most synthetic drugs available in Vietnam are thought to come from Cambodia, Hong Kong or the Golden Triangle region, stretching across parts of Laos, Thailand and Myanmar.

Human Trafficking: Spain (Part I)

By John E. Carey
Peace and Freedom
April 12, 2007

Central and South American mafias use Spain as their door to Europe. As the language is not a barrier to them, they find making illicit contacts in Spain to be straightforward and quite easy.

One of the best illegal money-making ventures in this region is human trafficking. Poor north Africans want to slip into Europe and the south Americans handle a huge human trafficking effort for the sex industry.

Methods used by traffickers to maintain control of their victims included physical abuse, forced use of drugs, withholding of travel documents, and threats to the victim’s family.

Women from Eastern Europe reportedly were subject to more severe violence and threats by traffickers.

Traffickers lured some victims from other regions with false promises of employment in service industries and agriculture but then forced them into prostitution upon their arrival in the country.

The media reported that criminal networks often lured their victims by using travel agencies and newspaper advertisements in their home countries that promised guaranteed employment in Spain.

Typically in the case of Romanian organized networks, women were forced into prostitution where 90 percent of their earnings were marked for the criminal network; men were often employed in low-paying construction jobs.

Clandestine clothing production and sales as well as work in restaurants were typical employment for illegal Asian immigrants, who came to the country with false documents through trafficking networks in places like Vietnam and Cambodia.

A typical police raid to actually catch traffickers may take more than a year to develop. In 2005, Spanish police arrested 14 people suspected of running a prostitution ring and human trafficking. The investigation had started in 2003. The group recruited hundreds of women coming mainly from Brazil. Gang members arranged passports and air tickets to Spain, where the women were persuaded and forced to work illegally as prostitutes in clubs in the southern regions of Andalusia and Extremadura.

According to the U.S. State Dept Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2006, “Spain is a destination and transit country for women trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation and forced labor. These victims are trafficked from Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, South and Central America, and Africa. The most prominent source countries for these victims are Romania, Russia, Brazil, Colombia, and Nigeria. Spain continued to serve as a transit country for victims destined for Portugal, France, and Germany. Romanian trafficking networks continued to expand their operations in Spain.”

A man familiar with Spain’s legal system told me “Spanish law doesn’t help either.”

A recent example: after a raid on a human-trafficking ring in the north of Spain (with collaboration from the Brazilian Federal Police), the ringleader skipped the country.

Several law enforcement officers in Spain told me that the penalties for trafficking are very lenient in Spain and even after a perpetrator is arrested he is likely out of prison quickly and back at work.

The Maghreb is the region of Africa north of the Sahara Desert and west of the Nile River — specifically, the region coinciding with the Atlas Mountains.

Spanish police say the Maghreb is ‘just down the road’ and is the mafia’s stronghold.

Mafia traffickers use the now infamous ‘cayuco’ system whereby they stuff anything from 10 to a few hundred people into Zodiacs and motor them across the straight.

Of course, if the Coast Guard sees them it’s into the water with them and hundreds perish every year.

A man familiar with Spanish law enforcement told me, “The Moroccan ‘Government’ (for want of a more realistic term for them) collect the ‘illegals’ from the borders in Ceutas and Melilla, Spanish strongholds, and dump them in the desert. They never actually get home again.

Spain in some ways is “The Wild West” of human trafficking.

We hope to report more on this unique area soon.

Our thanks to our sources in Spain.

Human Rights Issues In Asia: Red Alert

By John E. Carey
Quoc Te Co Van
February 25, 2007

There is something of a crisis in human rights abuses in Southeast Asia in general and in Communist Vietnam in particular.

According to David M. Kinchen, Editor, Huntington News Network, “hardliners in Vietnam’s politburo in Hanoi are obsessed with punishing, oppressing and even eliminating peoples — such as the Khmer Krom, Montagnards and Hmong Lao, that aligned themselves more than 30 years ago with the United States during the Vietnam War.”

The Communist Party of Indochina, founded by Ho Chi Minh, which is the only political entity in Vietnam, is the one organization most responsible for the killing fields of Cambodia, the repression of the boat people (escape from Vietnam has been a punishable crime since 1975), and the re-education camps set up to brainwash everyone from South Vietnam who participated in any way in the war against the Communists.

International human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and the Montagnard Foundation are issuing a “Red Alert” of sorts about the human rights abuses ongoing in Vietnam for three reasons: First, the Communist Party in Vietnam has stepped up its assault on ethnic minorities once loyal to the United States and, Second, the United States seems to be looking the other way, and Third, it is difficult to determine “ground truth” in these Communist countries because all the media is strictly controlled by the Communist state.

After thousand of Hmong Lao tribal peoples fled Vietnamese and Laotian military aggressions inside of the Communist country of Laos, the Communist Party of Indochina issued an order to eliminate the more than 10,000 of the ethnic minority Hmong Lao, descendants of former CIA soldiers, who remain in hiding in remote mountain areas in Laos.

Communist Vietnam is apparently using its soldiers to attack these indigenous peoples and killing thousands of Hmong Lao using extreme measures such as chemical weapons, bombs and rockets.

“We know that the Vietnamese are the higher rank military commanders inside of our country Laos, Hanoi is in charge of Laos – as in the case of Cambodia. Hanoi is giving the final orders – we saw them attacking us, we hear them speaking Vietnamese, it is no secret to us who is attacking us Hmong Lao” said Faitou Vue, a Hmong Lao refugee, and CIA veteran who fled Communist Laos’ widening military aggressions to refuge in Thailand.

In Vietnam, the indigenous peoples such as the Montagnards and Khmer Krom, who also sided with the U.S. during the Vietnam War, endure severe oppression and human rights violations, with many of them escaping to neighboring Cambodia.

“But if we stay in Cambodia, the Vietnamese will get us any minute. Cambodia listens to Hanoi, so many of our people got killed or forcefully brought back to Vietnam. The Cambodian authorities do nothing to protect us,” stated one of many hundreds of Khmer Krom refugees, an indigenous peoples from the Mekong Delta, who fled further than Cambodia, hiding as an illegal migrant in Thailand.

In December, a group of about 200 Hmong refugees escaped from the Communists along the Thai-Laos border and were assaulted by Thai authorities in an effort to drive them back into the Communist side of the border.

Some 22 ethnic Hmong refugees were sent to the Netherlands just two weeks ago as part of a program managed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.This occurred only about one month after President Bush and his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Communists Vietnam. One director of refugee operations for the UNHCR told us, “Frankly, we are very disappointed in the response of the United States to the plight of the ethnic minorities in Vietnam and elsewhere.”

These Hmong moved from Thailand to the Netherlands were among 153 migrants who have been held at a detention centre near the Thai-Laos border since December for illegally entering Thailand.

Also two weeks ago, inside of Vietnam — five Khmer Krom Buddhist temples, together with their Khmer Krom communities held a peaceful demonstration to request to Hanoi to be allowed to maintain their Buddhist religion, which they say was not granted.

“They abuse our people for so long, we are arrested for teaching our own language, or our history, and they always target our Buddhist monks, the heart and soul of our Khmer Krom people,” said T. Thach, president of NGO Khmer Krom Federation.

“Our temples are the center of our communities. We are imprisoned and tortured when we listen to the radio from the outside word, or when we check the internet related to our concerns. Writing e-mails to the outside world is prohibited.”

T. Thach continued: “If our Khmer Krom Buddhist monks teach the sacred Buddhist language Pali — they are ordered by Hanoi to include Communist doctrines, if not, they get disrobed and are not allowed to be monks anymore, and are imprisoned as traitors and enemies of Communism . This is not right: our religion has nothing to do with Communism, or any form of politics, it is our religion, and sacred to us. It is the teaching of peace and rightful conduct in life.

But we are not allowed to maintain our religion, we are not even allowed to maintain our Khmer Krom culture, way of life, actually, they want to Vietnamize us in a manner, that nothing would be left from us, as Khmer Krom peoples, or Montagnards peoples — and we object to that.”

“One can always tell when a group of Montagnards escapes into Mondulkiri Province. Vietnamese army and police officials chase after them and cross the border as if they owned western Cambodia,” said journalist The Co Van, from the Montagnard Foundation.

“The Cambodian provincial police are alerted, and the guesthouses in the capital of Sen Monorum quickly fill with Cambodian police and army officials from neighboring provinces,” The Co Van added.

“What a tragedy that America has abandoned our former allies in the Vietnam War a second time. Now the U.S. has the leverage to force the Vietnamese government to treat the Montagnards better but it remains silent when Hanoi glosses over their draconian human rights record in their bid for entrance into the WTO.”

The Montagnard Foundation reports that they hold evidence that bounty hunters capture the Montagnard refugees in Cambodia, and sell them back to the Vietnamese for $20 to $100.

Twenty dollars is a month’s pay for a policeman in this part of the world.

“Why does the mainstream media ignore the plight of the Montagnards, the Khmer Krom, and their cousins, the Hmong in Laos for over 30 years, and still continue to do so?” asked Chue Chou Tchang, from the Special Guerrilla Units (SGU) Veterans. SGU Veterans is a U.S.- based Hmong human rights organization organization.

“One has to wonder why the Vietnamese Communist Party is so paranoid and ruthless in their treatment of a few Montagnards and Khmer Krom — escaping their clutches in the middle of the night,” said Van.

“Why Laos, under the advice of Hanoi pressures Thailand to force thousands of Hmong Lao refugees back to Laos? That’s because they know they can get away with it and that the mainstream media in the West really isn’t interested in the human rights abuses of Communist police states” said Van.

EDITOR’s NOTE: The South Vietnamese called American military advisors “Co Van” during the war in Vietnam. But the word translates more exactly as “consultant.” Mr. Carey is former president of International (“Quoc Te”) Defense Consultants Inc., a company of Co Van that has operated since 1997.

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Hunting Montagnards In Cambodia

By The Co Van
February 22, 2007

They still hunt Montagnards here in the eastern province of Mondulkiri, Cambodia, like the Native American Indians were hunted down in the Old West in the United States. It’s hard to believe that such a thing could still be happening in the year 2006 and that the rest of the world doesn’t give a damn, but that’s the way it is here.

The irony is that hunting the forest animals for meat is now against the law in Cambodia but there is no such prohibition when it comes to hunting humans who flee oppression from the nearby police state of Vietnam.

The main crimes of the minority peoples of Southeast Asia is that they aligned themselves with the Americans during the Vietnam War and that the hardliners in the Hanoi politburo have never strayed from their obsession with collecting their blood debt after the war. The communist party of Indochina founded by Ho Chi Minh has given the world the boat people, the reeducation camps, the genocide of the Hmong people in Laos, and the killing fields of Cambodia.

The Vietnamese communist party apparatus still maintains a virtual iron curtain around the Central Highlands of Vietnam that used to be the traditional homeland for the 54 ethnic hill tribes loosely defined as Montagnards. No Montagnard can leave a village without a pass, their leaders are confined to house arrest, and many are in prison that refuse to denounce their protestant religion.

One can always tell when a group of Montagnards escape into Mondulkiri Province. Vietnamese army and police officials chase after them and cross the border as if they owned western Cambodia. The Cambodian provincial police are alerted, and the guesthouses in the capitol of Sen Monorum quickly fill with Cambodian police and army officials from neighboring provinces.

The government approved bounty hunters, who bring along their karaoke girls for the week’s fun, then hunt the fleeing Montagnards and sell them back to the Vietnamese for $20 to $100, depending upon the importance of the individual captured. Twenty dollars is a month’s pay for a policeman in this part of the world.

The UNHCR who is supposed to be there to assist the Montagnard refugees then enters the picture. After most of the Montagnards have been captured and sold back to the Vietnamese, Prime Minister Hun Sen gives permission to the UNHCR in Phnom Penh to travel to Mondulkiri to help the escaping Montagnards.

After an 8-hour drive from Phnom Penh to Mondulkiri in their shiny white Land Rovers, the UNHCR workers give the pretense of searching for the escaping refugees, and once in awhile, they happen to find a few. One has to wonder why the UNHCR has their refugee camp an impossible distance of 300 kilometers for the fleeing Montagnards to reach safely.

My experience last year with a UNHCR rep in charge of the refugee camp was that he had utter contempt for the fleeing Montagnards from Vietnam, referring to them as economic refugees rather than legitimate political refugees. With a straight face, he told me that the Montagnards sent back to Vietnam are quite well treated and receive high paying jobs. “We have a Vietnamese on staff who resides in Hanoi, “he proudly stated. “He travels to the Central Highlands to investigate human rights violations.” And surprise, there aren’t any human rights violations.

That’s the way the game is played here in Cambodia. The human rights organizations that I met with here last month in Phnom Penh have little respect for the UNHCR. UNHCR bowed to behind the scenes pressure from the Hanoi government several years ago and pulled their camps back to Phnom Penh where they now only give a wink and a nod to the fleeing Montagnards.

The US Consulate staff in Vietnam has adapted the UNHCR’s view of the Montagnards’ plight in the Central Highlands in that the Montagnards themselves are the cause for most of their difficulties and that there are no human rights abuses there.

In October of 2005 in Saigon, I met with the refugee resettlement section representing eleven Montagnard families from North Carolina. They were pleading for US officials to intervene with government officials for their relatives who were being hassled and extorted for huge sums of money for documents that they needed to successfully emigrate.

“The Montagnards are basically an uneducated bunch who don’t follow the rules,” lectured one senior US official. “When we go out to investigate, we find them to be the ones causing the problems.”

But of course, when US officials are allowed into the Central Highlands on rare occasions, a communist minder accompanies them. The Montagnards are then interviewed with police officials breathing down their necks. And surprise, they say they are treated quite well.

There is an iron curtain that surrounds the Central Highlands today. There is absolutely no independent inquiry allowed there. Even our own ambassador can’t visit there independently. There was more press freedom in Vietnam back during the Vietnam War as western reporters could travel anywhere and report their findings without censure or fear. The American media doesn’t seem to be interested in this topic today.

What a tragedy that America has abandoned our former allies in the Vietnam War a second time. Now the US has the leverage to force the Vietnamese government to treat the Montagnards better but it remains silent when Hanoi glosses over their draconian human rights record in their bid for entrance into the WTO.

The new focus in Vietnam today is market capitalism with no human rights or religious freedom for the ethnic minorities. The communist party and the politburo that are the real power in Vietnam learned long ago that they could make money off the backs of the little people. That’s why they confiscated the Montagnards’ valuable land in the Central Highlands.

According to the magazine Asia Inc, Nov-Dec 2006, the government of Vietnam today owns 1500 state enterprises worth 30 billion dollars. Yes, that’s right, a tiny minority that comprises the communist party that is the government of Vietnam is now worth 30 billion dollars.

Why have the mainstream media ignored the plight of the Montagnards and their cousins, the Hmong in Laos for over 30 years, and still continue to do so?

The modern day intelligentsia that dominate our universities where speech codes are in place and free exchange of ideas are very limited, grew up as a part of the anti-war movement of the l960’s singing the simple Marxist phrases of Ho Chi Minh and damning the evil American military capitalist machine. And most of the mainstream media stars of that time period marched lock step with them. It’s now a given that the Vietnam War was lost in the streets of American and on American television. Even the North Vietnamese generals admit it in their memoirs. (Is a similar parallel unfolding today?)

Those Vietnam Veterans who fought the war along side the South Vietnamese and the Montagnards received the scorn of the American left who sang praises for Uncle Ho and his communist cadres who were going to introduce the new socialist paradise on earth. But then, the holocaust that unraveled in Southeast Asia after the American military left, had been simply too painful for the left in America to face, for if they honestly examined it, they might find themselves guilty by their tacit support for the perpetrators of the killing fields in Cambodia, the reeducation camps in Vietnam, and the genocide of the ethnic hill tribes that continues today.

To put it into simpler words, that’s the side the left in America rooted for in the Vietnam War. How can they ever honestly face up to it? Or accurately write about it.

One has to wonder why the Vietnamese communist party is so paranoid and ruthless in their treatment of a few Montagnards escaping their clutches in the middle of the night. That’s because they know they can get away with it and that the mainstream media in the West really isn’t interested in the human rights abuses of a communist police state.

It seems the Socialist Republic of Vietnam still owns the hearts and minds of the dominant media culture in America. By their ongoing silence that has lasted for over 30 years, they continue to ignore the ongoing genocide in Southeast Asia of our former allies and swallow the communist doublespeak as to the human rights violation there.

But if one were ever to stray off the tourist path in Cambodia and Vietnam like I have, it’s easy to discover that, “The Montagnards are hunted down like animals and sold back to the Vietnamese communist government, and the rest of the world doesn’t give a damn.”
***********************
We at Peace and Freedom salute Mr. Scott Johnson in Australia who works tirelessly in behalf of the Montagnard peoples and manages the Montagnard Foundation.
http://www.montagnard-foundation.org/homepage.html

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