Celebrating war anniversary, Vietnam warns of new threats
PLEIKU - Officials celebrated the anniversary Saturday of the Communist victory over the city of Pleiku 26
years ago with warnings of possible new threats against the government.
The provincial governor, Nguyen Vy Ha, and other officials accused a U.S.-based exile group of instigating recent violent
protests in the Central Highland area by several thousand members of ethnic minority groups.
"The armed forces must increase their vigilance to defeat all subversive plots by hostile forces," Pleiku military chief Maj.
Nguyen Van Lao told an anniversary ceremony attended by several thousand people.
Gia Lai province, where Pleiku is located, and neighboring Daklak province were closed to foreigners after the protests, which
began Feb. 2, until the recent visit by a group of foreign journalists.
The government's strong reaction to the protests, which have been condemned almost daily in vivid articles 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, and about 4,000 people in Pleiku, officials said.
Protesters threw rocks, bound the wrists of officials, and seized truncheons from police, witnesses and officials said. Police did
not respond with violence, a witness said.
Many of the protesters were members of a banned Protestant church, the witness said. Vietnam allows only churches that are
officially recognized by the government.
The protests, along with recent detentions of several religious figures, have become an issue in U.S. congressional approval of a
bilateral trade agreement which would complete the normalization of ties between the two former enemies.
U.S. Ambassador Pete Peterson is currently in Washington seeking support for ratification of the trade agreement, which was
signed last July after five years of negotiations. The agreement would require a restructuring of Vietnamese business and trading
practices in exchange for improved access to the U.S. market.
Gov. Ha accused a U.S.-based minority exile group, the Montagnard Foundation, of instigating the violence and showed
reporters a leaflet he said was distributed by the foundation calling for rebellion and an independent nation for minority people in
the region.
"The reactionary forces from outside have agitated people in Vietnam, particularly in our province, to create some unusual
events," he said.
Anticommunist Montagnard members fought alongside the Americans during the Vietnam War and are still distrusted by
Vietnam's government.
The war ended in 1975 after Communist North Vietnamese forces first took Buon Ma Thuot and then Pleiku before marching
south to Saigon, encountering little resistance. The U.S. had withdrawn most of its troops in 1973, leaving the fighting of the
war to the then South Vietnamese government.
Minority groups in the Central Highlands have complained about encroachment on their ancestral land by the Vietnamese
majority, 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 were below the poverty line, compared to 31% for the majority Kihn population.
The associated Press - Saint Patrick's Day 2001.
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