~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

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Vietnam says planned Christmas protest thwarted in restive Central Highlands

Vietnam said on Monday it thwarted a Christmas Eve protest planned in the restive Central Highlands by a U.S.-based exile group that the government has accused of stirring up unrest in the past. "Plots to create disturbances on Christmas Eve have been completely spoiled," the state-run Thanh Nien (Youth) newspaper said.

Government officials in the Central Highlands contacted more than 400 religious groups and clergy before Christmas, telling them of "plots by the reactionary forces headed by Kok Ksor to coerce and excite ethnic minority members who are religious followers to participate in protests and rebellion on Christmas," Pham The Dung, head of Gia Lai province's People's Committee, was quoted as saying. Dung said church leaders were asked "to persuade their followers not to listen to the instigation."

Ksor is a former member of the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races, which fought alongside U.S. forces during the Vietnam War. He now heads the South Carolina-based Montagnard Foundation, which advocates for indigenous people's rights. Many Vietnam hill tribe people, collectively known as Montagnards, follow an unsanctioned form of Protestantism outlawed by the Vietnamese government. The Vietnamese government has repeatedly accused Ksor of being responsible for coordinating mass protests among ethnic minority groups earlier this year and in 2001.

Up to 10,000 ethnic minority villagers mounted massive Easter weekend demonstrations against allged land confiscation and religious repression in the Central Highlands. Dozens of ethnic minority members have been given hefty jail terms for organizing the protests, and for subsequently leading hundreds of refugees into Cambodia. The newspaper said on Monday that Central Highlands authorities received tips in July about Christmas unrest planned by the Montagnard Foundation. "The hostile forces' desire was to create instability" in the highlands, it said.

Authorities summoned ethnic minority villagers suspected of instigating unrest and ordered them to abandon unlawful acts. Checkpoints were set up on roads to provincial capitals. The newspaper also reported that Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung directed a key Foreign Ministry official, Nguyen Duc Hung, to meet Friday with representatives from the embassies of the United States, Canada, and Australia _ as well as representatives of the European Union and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees _ to inform them of the Central Highlands situation.

Hung reportedly told the envoys that the Vietnamese government would use all measures to prevent instability in the highlands. Hung also reminded U.S. officials not to support such groups, especially the Montagnard Foundation.

The Associated Press - December 27, 2004.