Vietnam war Era guerrilla group cited in Highlands unrest
HANOI - Vietnamese authorities arrested more than a dozen people linked to a Vietnam War-era guerrilla
movement, accusing them of stirring up recent protests in the central highlands, an official said Saturday.
Authorities have arrested 15 former members of the FULRO movement in Gia Lai province who helped incite the protests, a
local official in Gia Lai said on condition of anonymity.
FULRO, from the French for United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races, was a militant hill tribe guerrilla movement
that fought alongside the Americans during the Vietnam War.
After the war ended in 1975, the group continued small-scale resistance against the Communist government. By the late 1980s,
most of its strength was spent.
The Gia Lai official said that police were combing the area in search of another five people suspected of involvement, adding
that provocateurs spread Protestantism - the religion of many ethnic minority members in the area - and advocated autonomy.
The rare large-scale unrest by members of highland ethnic minority groups swept through the coffee-growing provinces of
Daklak and Gia Lai, beginning on Feb. 2. The Communist government closed the area to outsiders and the U.S. Embassy
issued an advisory against travel there.
Confiscation of minority land for coffee plantations has been one sore point, and religion is apparently another. Many ethnic
minority members are converts to evangelical Protestantism, and the Communist authorities have a record of suppressing
religious groups.
Authorities brought in soldiers and riot police to quell the protests, the most serious civil unrest in several years. Up to 20,000
people were believed to have participated at one point.
Travel into the area is still restricted, with checkpoints set up along the major highways leading to Pleiku and Buon Ma Thuot,
the provincial capitals. Foreigners are barred until Feb. 15.
The official said the 20 main provocateurs were former FULRO fighters who went through Vietnam's forced labor
"re-education" camps. These camps were prisons for loyalists of the former pro-Western regime.
The Associated Press - February 11, 2001.
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