Vietnam Jails Eight Montagnards for ‘Undermining National Unity’
RFA – 05/29/2013
A court in Vietnam’s
Central Highlands on Wednesday sentenced eight ethnic minority Montagnards
affiliated with an unregistered Catholic church to between three and 11 years in
prison for “undermining unity” in the authoritarian state.
The Gia Lai provincial court said some of the eight had worked with a banned
exile organization to establish an independent state for indigenous peoples in
the Central Highlands, according to state media.
The others were accused of inciting thousands of protesters to demonstrate
against their relocation from their village to make way for a power plant in
2008.
All eight—who are between 32 and 73 years old—were convicted under Article 87 of
the penal code, a national security provision that forbids “undermining the
[national] unity policy” by “sowing division” or ethnic or religious hatred.
Vietnam’s Central Highlands are home to some 30 tribes of indigenous peoples,
known collectively as Montagnards or the Degar, who rights groups say suffer
extreme persecution.
In the early 2000s, thousands in the region staged violent protests against the
confiscation of their ancestral lands and religious controls, prompting a brutal
crackdown by security forces that saw hundreds of Montagnards charged with
national security crimes.
Scott Johnson of the Montagnard Foundation, a U.S.-based rights group, said
Vietnam’s jailing of members of the ethnic minority for national security crimes
and linking them to alleged overseas separatist groups was unjustified.
“In reality all these ethnic people … want are indigenous land rights and basic
human rights,” he said.
“They are not terrorists, they are not separatists, and they do not seek an
independent state.”
“Basically the Vietnamese government is seeking to crush the independent
underground house church movement [in the region],” he said.
FULRO
Vietnamese state media identified the eight convicted on Wednesday as Runh, Byuk,
Jonh, Dinh Hron, and Dinh Lu from Gia Lai province and A Hyum, A Tach, and Y
Gyin from Kon Tum province.
Vietnam News Agency reported that according to the indictment, in 2002 Y Gyin
had “spread rumors” that the Virgin Mary had appeared in Ha Mon, where
authorities were planning to build a hydroelectricity plant.
The others joined him in “enticing” thousands of people to protest against the
plant in 2008, and the same year, A Hyum contacted an alleged exiled armed
separatist organization—the Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Peoples, or
FULRO—to ask for help, it said.
FULRO, founded in the 1950s, was a resistance army that fought on the side of
United States and South Vietnamese forces during the Vietnam War before
officially disbanding in the 1990s. Vietnam has asserted that rights groups
working on Central Highlands issues are part of an ongoing separatist movement
linked to FULRO, but the groups reject the claims, saying they are working
nonviolently for human rights.
FULRO had instructed the eight men to “prepare to establish” a separate state in
the Central Highlands, and they started several branches of the organization in
the region, state media reported.
Ha Mon Catholics
According to previous Human Rights Watch reports, Runh, Jonh, and Byuk were
taken into custody in May last year for being associated with the unregistered
Ha Mon Catholic sect, which Y Gyin founded around 1999.
The group said that authorities have painted the Ha Mon sect as a “false
religion” that is being taken advantage of by FULRO to undermine national
security.
While Protestant Montagnards have faced religious repression for many years,
Catholic Montagnards have more recently become a target for persecution by the
government, according to the group.
Reported by Thanh Truc for RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Translated by Viet
Ha. Written in English by Rachel Vandenbrink.