Two relatives of head of exile group jailed for creating public disorder in Vietnam

AP - Wednesday January 12, 2005

A Vietnamese court has jailed two relatives of the head of a U.S.-based exile group for instigating unrest in the troubled central part of the country, where Christian hilltribes have protested against alleged government harrassment, a court official said Wednesday.

Krok Ksor, 52, the younger brother of Kok Ksor _ who heads the South Carolina-based Montagnards Foundation _ was sentenced Tuesday to seven years in prison for "causing public disturbances" by the People's Court in Gia Lai province in the Central Highlands, the official said on condition of anonymity.

Ksor's nephew Ksor Dro, 27, was jailed for six years while five other associates who are members of the Jarai ethnic minority group received jail terms ranging from four to five years after the one-day trial, he said.

The defendants were convicted of instigating hundreds of local ethnic minority people to join anti-government protests during Easter weekend last year under Kok Ksor's instructions, he said. Some of the protesters attacked police with canes, bricks and rocks, the official said.

Tens of thousands of Christian hilltribe members in the Central Highland provinces of Daklak and Gia Lai joined the demonstration to protest the government's alleged restriction of their Protestant faith, and to raise land grievances.

International rights groups have said at least 10 protesters were killed in clashes with police while Hanoi said only two were killed by rocks thrown by other protesters.

Hanoi has repeatedly accused the Montagnards Foundation of instigating the protest and another demonstration in Feb. 2001, after which about 1,000 members of ethnic minority groups fled to neighboring Cambodia. They were eventually resettled in the United States.

Dozens of ethnic minority members were given hefty jail terms for organizing the 2001 protests, and for subsequently leading the refugees into Cambodia.