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Post April 12 - The UN Bully - Tony Kevin
- Washington
Times Apr 14 - Selling Out Our Allies - Col. George Jatras
- Washington
Times Apr 10 - Creeping Genocide - Scott Johnson
- News Observer
Apr 10 - Can We Spurn Those Who "Bothered Us? - Steve Harrison
- News
Observer Apr 8 - Montagnards Face Endless Persecution - Phung
Nguyen
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- Our Man
On The Ground - Apr 14 - Evacuation Preparations
- Our Man
On The Ground - Apr 14 - Convoy Underway
- Our Man
On The Ground - Apr 12 - The Gravity Of The Problem
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On The Ground - Apr 11 - How To Help The Montagnards Today
- Our Man
On The Ground - Apr 11 - SitRep From The Gulag
- Our Girl
On The Ground - Apr 10 - Dental Help & Coordination Needed
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- Tony Kevin
- Camberra, Australia
The Phnom Penh Post
- Letters
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- Letters to the Editor
Phnom Penh Post
Published 4/12/2002
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- LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
April 12, 2002
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- UN Bully
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- Dear Editor:
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- I am delighted at the news
that Hun Sen's government has agreed to a US Government humanitarian
offer to accept some 900 Montagnard refugees from Vietnam who
had crossed the border into Cambodia, but whose involuntary repatriation
into Vietnam the UNHCR had subsequently refused to facilitate,
accusing both the Vietnamese and Cambodian Governments of violating
their accords with UNHCR on this matter. (By the way, I wish
that Australia had offered to take some of these Montagnard refugees).
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- But am I being paranoid, or
was this - before the US Government's timely humanitarian decision
- another example of the UN system trying to wrong-foot Cambodia
and to leave it in a situation in which it would again be accused
by the world of violating human rights (and, for good measure,
acting at the behest of Vietnam)?
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- If this is becoming a pattern
of UN and UN agency behaviour towards Cambodia under Kofi Annan,
when is someone going to call Annan's bluff?
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- Does the UN have nothing better
to do than to bully Cambodia?
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- Tony Kevin,
Canberra, Australia
- [end]
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- The Washington Times
www.washtimes.com
- Letters
- Letters to the Editor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published 4-14-2002
- Selling
Out Our Allies
- Scott Johnson's April.7 Commentary
Forum piece, "Creeping genocide in Asia," is a stinging
condemnation of the cruel and ruthless oppression of the Montagnard
people.
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- This is the same regime with
whom the Clinton administration was so anxious to normalize diplomatic
and trade relations, relations - relations that have continued
under President Bush.
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- Mr. Johnson, who is with the
International Commission of Jurists, wrote in support of a Commentary
FORUM piece by Michael Benge, a former POW and a long-time activist
on behalf of the Montagnard people, our allies during the Vietnam
War (Terrifying abuses in Vietnam, Jan. 13).
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- He also wrote to condemn U.S.
policy toward Vietnam, which allows these atrocities to continue
without protest from our government.
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- In fact, Sen. John Kerry,
Massachusetts Democrat, who along with former POW Sen. John McCain,
Arizona Republican, gave former President Bill Clinton the political
cover he needed to normalize relations with Vietnam, has blocked
a vote on the "Vietnam Human Rights Act" in the U.S.
Senate.
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- Has Mr. Kerry no shame, no
sense of loyalty? Many American owe their lives to these people
whom the Vietnamese government are brutalizing and murdering.
Yet some people are willing to sacrifice them for the cheap imports
from Hanoi's sweat shops. There are also those who appear to
be uninformed.
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- As if betrayal by our government
were not enough, in his April 8 column, Sgt. Shaft reported that
a Pennsylvania Vietnam veterans' group is honoring Douglas "Pete"
Peterson, "America's first postwar ambassador to Vietnam."
Apparently. He will be the keynote speaker of the groups annual
convention, where he will be presented its Veteran of the Year
Award.
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- Now, Mr. Peterson is a distinguished
combat veteran of the Vietnam War, and he was a POW for 61/2
years. He also served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Unfortunately, his sense of loyalty and duty must have been overwhelmed
by the perks and prestige of being an ambassador. He was the
ambassador, while as Mr. Johnson described, Montagnard women
were being sterilized forcibly and brutally and Christians tortured
and murdered.
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- Where was Peterson's voice
on behalf of those people? If he did report these outrages to
the State Department and his reports were spiked, which is very
possible, where was the courage he showed as a combat pilot and
POW? Where was his public outcry?
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- The usual answer to those
questions is that "There were larger issues at stake."
To that, I can only ask: What happened to the days when America
stood for justice and loyalty? Or is that just a figment of my
imagination?
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- Colonel George Jatras,
U.S. Air Force (Retired)
Sterling, Va.
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- The Washington Times
www.washtimes.com
- April 07, 2002, Sunday, Final
Edition
- SECTION: PART LETTERS;
- FORUM LENGTH: 1309 words
HEADLINE:
- Creeping
Genocide In Asia
BYLINE: THE WASHINGTON
TIMES BODY:
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- I commend Michael Benge's
Commentary Forum contribution (The Washington Times, Jan. 13,
"Terrifying abuses in Vietnam") for highlighting the
truth about Vietnam's treatment of the Montagnards.
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- The International Commission
of Jurists has also concluded that the Vietnamese government
is committing systematic persecution of these indigenous people
(ICY Report: Australian Section, July 2001) - namely through
torture, killings, religious oppression and confiscation of ancestral
lands.
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- It is disturbing however,
to note attempts to downgrade Vietnam's unspeakable brutality
(See: Forum, March 10, "True labeling or red-baiting,"
by Andrew Wells-Dang). Such reporting only serves to legitimize
Vietnam's human rights abuses while prolonging the suffering
of innocent Montagnards.
- Mr. Wells-Dang should be reminded
that no country (communist or noncommunist) should be excused
for human-rights abuses and that inside Vietnam's central highlands
today, thousands of soldiers and security forces have brutally
enforced martial law.
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- While this persecution may
not be classed as "international terrorism" in a "al
Qaeda" context, I can assure him that a Christian Montagnard
chained to the floor in an underground cell and paralyzed from
electric shock torture, would still consider it an act of "terrorism".
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- There is evidence that not
only are U.N. population funds being used for forced abortion
in China (The Washington Times, Jan. 29, "Population fund
at U.N. protested") but that these funds are being used
by the Vietnamese communist government to eliminate the Montagnard
hill tribes through "forced and coercive" sterilizations
programs.
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- This is most disturbing given
that "imposing measures to prevent births" is defined
as a crime of genocide under the U.N. Convention on the Crime
and Punishment of Genocide.
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- The Montagnard Foundation
has documented more than 1,000 cases of Montagnard women who
were sterilized by the Vietnamese authorities through force,
coercion, bribery, threats of fines or imprisonment. The total
figure however, is unknown as the Montagnard's homelands remains
under martial law and hidden from international scrutiny.
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- In July 2000, another lawyer
and I questioned Eric Palstra, the Senior External Relations
officer of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Geneva
on Vietnam's "sterilization policies." He confirmed
the UNFPA and World Bank do indeed fund family planning programs
in Vietnam, but nervously shifted all blame from the United Nations.
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- His exact words concerning
the sterilizations were "In Vietnam there is not always
a trickle down effect of proper implementation." I asked
if he knew whether Vietnam was targeting the Montagnards "specifically"
and how U.N. monies for these procedures are monitored. On this
he could not give me an answer.
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- On Aug. 8, 2001, I watched
as the Vietnamese ambassador to the United Nations, Nguyen Quy
Binh, faced the U.N. Committee for Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
His response to questions of forced and coerced sterilizations
was that the Vietnamese government offers "incentives and
fines only" for sterilizations of Montagnard women.
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- He denied these sterilizations
are "forced." These "fines" and "incentives"
are however, themselves nothing less than grave violations of
the international standards regarding reproductive rights. The
U.S. government even passed a law (Tiarhart Amendment), which
prohibits the granting of U.S. monies to programs by countries
conducting such violations of women's rights.
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- Montagnard women continue
to recount that during 1996-2001 Vietnamese authorities entered
their villages daily to round up women of childbearing age and
forced, bribed and threatened them to undergo surgical sterilization.
One woman sobbed when she told me how her sister died during
the operation.
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- In the early 1990s, the communist
authorities conducted sterilizations using an acid chemical "quinicrine,"
in pellet form which, when inserted into the uterus, would dissolve
and burn the uterus shut. The British Medical journal Lancet
(1993, 342, July 24, pages 213-217) reported more than 31,000
women being sterilized in Vietnam by this method.
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- While it is unknown whether
Vietnam still uses this "acid," it seems Hanoi has
an agenda to lower the population of the Montagnards. Recently,
Vietnam Minister Tran Thi Trung Chien stated that Vietnam intends
to achieve a zero growth rate, especially in rural remote areas,
by the year 2005 (Asia Pulse, "Vietnam plans target 0 percent
population growth in rural areas by 2005," Dec, 27, 2001).
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- "Rural remote areas"
is notably, where the Montagnards reside and, given Vietnam's
escalating repression against them, this prospect of zero growth
warrants urgent investigation.
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- Sterilizations however, are
just the tip of the iceberg of persecution confronting the Montagnards.
Since 1975, the Vietnamese government has arrested, imprisoned
and tortured them, while confiscating their ancestral lands and
persecuting them for converting to Christianity. The revenge
for the Vietnam War continues, for more than 40,000 Montagnards
had once served as allies to the U.S. during that conflict.
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- Over the past year, Human
Rights Watch, Amnesty International, two European Parliament
Resolutions, various nongovernmental organizations, U.N. bodies,
and U.S. members of Congress have condemned Vietnam's abuses
of the Montagnards. The U.S. State Department and Human Rights
Watch even reported how Montagnards were made to drink animal's
blood while being forced to renounce their Christian beliefs.
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- More than 1,000 Montagnards
who have escaped into Cambodia now suffer an uncertain fate as
they languish in emergency refugee camps set up by the United
Nations. Vietnam has offered "bounties" for their capture,
while both Vietnam and Cambodia have blatantly ignored international
law and sold, beaten, kidnapped and arrested many fleeing refugees.
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- The situation is deplorable
and full support should be given to the members of U.S. Congress
who are appealing to President Bush to exercise his discretionary
powers over funding destined for family planning programs by
nations who violate women's rights.
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- In Vietnam's case, justice
would also demand that all aid and trade benefits to Vietnam
be halted immediately until persecution of the Montagnards ceases.
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- I echo the words of Former
Deputy Ambassador to the Republic of Vietnam, Wolf Lehman (The
Washington Times, Jan. 30) "that Vietnam must address abuses."
America's loyal allies from the Vietnam War must not be abandoned
to continually face the revenge enacted by Hanoi. It is thus
America's duty to now assist the Montagnards.
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- While President Bush and the
State Department should be highly commended for the recent offer
of asylum to the 1,000 Montagnard refugees who escaped to Cambodia,
we must not forget the underlying problem inside Vietnam.
Forced from their ancestral lands and allocated small plots to
farm, the Montagnards continue to suffer malnutrition and poverty.
If they voice a protest, they face torture, imprisonment or death.
Vietnam's intent becomes quite clear - it is practicing "creeping"
genocide.
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- The lies and denials by Vietnam's
official spokespeople on the Montagnard situation is criminal,
as is Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry's refusal to permit
the "Vietnam Human Rights Act" from being voted on
in the U.S. Senate.
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- What reason can Mr. Kerry
have for holding a "human rights" bill from being voted
on?
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- Vietnam remains one of the
worst violators of human rights in Asia and its reign of terror
against the Montagnards must cease. In the name of humanity -
the international community must act urgently and force Vietnam
to end the persecution of these indigenous peoples.
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- SCOTT JOHNSON
International Commission of Jurists
West Australian Branch.
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- The
Greensboro News & Observer
- Letters
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- Letters to the Editor
Greensboro News Observer
Published 4/8/2002
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- LOAD-DATE: April 8, 2002
- April 8, 2002 Monday
ALL EDITIONS
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. A8
LENGTH: 272 words
HEADLINE:
CAN
WE SPURN THOSE WHO 'BROTHERED' US?
- BODY:
I was amazed to read Frank
Reinking's letter, "Keep Montagnards home in Vietnam"
(April 2), in which he counseled that the plan to resettle Montagnard
refugees to the United States was "executed in blissful
ignorance."
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- That's odd, since the whole
of Reinking's complaints about the resettlement plan reference
an ethnic group other than the subject Montagnards.
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- As reminder, ethnic Montagnards/Dega
were the most precious and capable U.S. allies during the Vietnam
War.
They lost about half their male population in defense of U.S./South
Vietnamese interests.
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- They saved multiple hundreds
of American lives, and have suffered persecution to the extent
of genocide ever since - even today.
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- When the U.S. military was
pulled out of Vietnam, some two years before it fell to the North
Vietnam, we also abandoned the Montagnards to their own survival.
They were hopelessly outnumbered, without equipment or supplies,
and left for persecution or slaughter by a vengeful conqueror,
the present government of Vietnam. This is our own perpetual
shame.
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- Welcoming to our shores 900-plus
desperate refugee Montagnards who have fled for their lives into
Cambodia is the very least we owe to our surviving friends and
brothers-in-arms.
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- If you can document any of
your local or federal tax money going to welfare for Montagnards,
I'll match it. That just isn't their way.
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- As a combat veteran who was
"brothered" by Montagnards, I'm eager to welcome them
to the United States and know that they will make excellent citizens
and neighbors.
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- Ignorance, sir, is bad-mouthing
the wrong ethnic group.
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- Steve Harrison
Charleston, Ill.
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The Greensboro News & Observer
- Letters
- Letters to the Editor
Greensboro News Observer
LOAD-DATE: April 8,
2002
- April 8, 2002 Monday
ALL EDITIONS SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. A8
LENGTH: 307 words
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- HEADLINE:
Montagnards
Face Relentless Persecution
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- BODY:
- Regarding Frank Reinking's
letter on the resettlement of Montagnards in the Triad (April
2):
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- I would like to point out
some facts about these Montagnards. Since the fall of South Vietnam
in 1975, they have struggled continuously and desperately against
the communist government for their survival.
- In February 2001, they were
forced by that government to abandon their villages in Vietnam's
Central Highlands and finally escaped to Cambodia.
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- Most of these Montagnards
are devoted Christians with a strong feeling of Christian community,
despite the communist government's open practice of religious
persecution. This feeling has prevented the government from breaking
their spirit.
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- The communist government distrusts
these Montagnards because their family members had joined the
U.S. Special Forces in fighting against communists during the
Vietnam War. Due to their sustained resistance against efforts
to regulate their traditional ways of life, the communist government
considers them as wayward and dangerous citizens.
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- In light of these facts, repatriating
these Montagnards to Vietnam is sending them to concentration
camps or mining fields. Offering them resettlement in the U.S.
is a humanitarian decision compatible with the highest international
norms.
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- Resettling the Montagnards
in the Triad is not without problems. We understand Mr. Reinking's
concerns and because of this understanding, we are deeply grateful
to the American people for their generosity.
- With valuable help from American
churches, large Vietnamese communities in the Triad, and their
resilience, these Montagnards, very soon, will be self-sufficient
and able to prove that they are productive and law-abiding residents
and citizens of this country.
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- Phung Nguyen
Greensboro
The writer is a member
of the Vietnamese Association of Greensboro.
- LOAD-DATE: April 8, 2002
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