Vietnam govt prevents journalists' access to protesters

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Vietnam govt prevents journalists' access to protesters

PLEIKU - For a second day Friday, Vietnamese officials prevented foreign journalists from meeting with members of ethnic minority groups in the Central Highland region who participated in several days of rare violent protests last month. The government's strong reaction to the protests, which have been condemned almost daily in the official press, illustrates the sharp limits on dissent in Vietnam's tightly controlled society. Protests, especially ones challenging government authority, are highly unusual.

The relatively small protests involved several hundred members of ethnic minority groups in Buon Ma Thuot, the capital of Daklak province, and about 4,000 people in Pleiku in neighboring Gia Lai province, officials said. In the Eah'leo area of Gia Lai province, several hundred protesters bound the wrists of officials and seized truncheons from police and waived them in the air, a witness said. Others threw stones at the police, who stood in formation and did respond with violence, the witness said. Many of the protesters were members of a banned Protestant church, he said. Vietnam allows only churches that are officially recognized by the government.

In a series of vivid articles on the protests, Vietnam's state press has accused a U.S.-based minority exile group, the Montagnard Foundation, of instigating the violence. Anti-communist Montagnard members fought alongside U.S. forces during the Vietnam War and are still distrusted by Vietnam's government. Officials in the two provinces, however, gave sometimes contradictory explanations of the protests, attempting to minimize them while warning of a security threat from "overseas reactionary forces." Other officials blamed the protests, however, on land disputes.

Minority groups have complained about encroachment on their ancestral land by the Vietnamese majority for creation of coffee plantations, as well as government restrictions on the practice of their Protestant religion. Vietnam has some 54 minority groups which account for about 15% of its population. In 1998, 75% of all ethnic minority people lived below the poverty line, compared to 31% for the majority Kihn population.

The Associated Press - Saint Patrick's Day, 2001.

Vietnam stages display of might in restive highlands

PLEIKU - Vietnam's communist authorities staged a display of military might in this central highland town Saturday as a six-week-old wave of ethnic unrest continued to grip the surrounding countryside. As special forces troops in riot helmets and flak jackets paraded before dignitaries and their guests, the town's military commander called on security services to confront sabotage efforts being mounted against the regime.

"I call on the military to defeat all plots of peaceful evolution caused by hostile forces," said Major Nguyen Van Lao, using the regime's usual term of derision for the movements that led to the collapse of its Eastern bloc allies. Vietnam has accused emigre groups in the United States of inciting violent protests among the highland's mainly Christian indigenous minorities which have swept Vietnam's coffee belt since early February. The commemorative parade, to mark the 26th anniversary of the communists' capture of the city at the tail-end of the Vietnam War, was a reassertion of authority after thousands of minority protestors poured in from the countryside in bloody clashes with the authorities on February 2. Plain clothes security forces were out in force to prevent any repetition marring the celebrations, which came a week after violent clashes again rocked the rural district of Cuu Prong just to the west.

Residents in the city of Buon Me Thuot to the south said similar celebrations to mark last Saturday's anniversary of its capture had been called off because of the unrest. Dignitaries said authorities normally marked the anniversary every five years. The decision to celebrate this year despite the anger among minorities, who still form 49 percent of the province's population, was a central government decision, they added. President Tran Duc Luong had decided to declare Pleiku a hero city in commemoration of its post-war achievements as well as its contribution to the communist military victory. But the celebration rang hollow as the security services continued to battle a wave of unrest which has gripped virtually all of the province's 13 districts.

Only a minority of the highlanders supported the communists during the war and remnants of a US-backed anti-communist guerrilla group continued to fight on from across the Cambodian border until as recently as 1992. The authorities accuse veterans of that campaign, now given refuge in the United States, of inciting the unrest. The province's ethnic Vietnamese people's committee chairman, Nguyen Vi Ha, hailed the glowing economic achievements of the communist regime for the city's population. The highlands have made impressive economic progress in recent years but this has led to a growing marginalization of the minorities.

Large-scale clearance of the province's forests for ethnic Vietnamese settlers to grow cash crops has left the highlanders a minority for the first time, according to the 1999 census. And while the minorities are represented in the highlands' provincial leaderships, political power remains firmly with the settlers, officials concede. Officials privately say the accusations of foreign plots are a diversion from the underlying reasons behind the protests, which are entirely home-grown. "It will take decades to overcome the animosity of the ethnic minorities towards the Vietnamese," one official admitted to AFP.

Agence France Presse - Saint Patrick's Day, 2001.