Vietnam’s Montagnards Face the Propaganda War

Recent demonstrations are sure to bring more repression for minority Christians.

Special to Compass Direct

LOS ANGELES, May 17 (Compass) -- During the Easter weekend of April 10 and 11, and on some days afterward, Montagnards in Vietnam’s Central Highlands attempted to stage demonstrations to call attention to the harsh injustices they suffer at the hands of communist authorities and ethnic Vietnamese settlers.

Tribal demonstrators planned to travel from home villages in a coordinated manner to several main centers, especially Buonmathuot and Pleiku cities. According to reports from Montagnards in the Central Highlands, civilians and Vietnamese security forces dressed in civilian clothes attacked the demonstrators with weapons such as clubs with embedded nails, iron bars, chains, hoes and machetes. An unknown number of Montagnards were killed, hundreds more were injured and many are missing. These have either been arrested or have fled.

The government now admits the demonstrations involved thousands of people.

Information from several sources poured out after the events. The Vietnamese government mounted an aggressive propaganda campaign. On the other extreme, a U.S.-based organization supporting Montagnard rights, called the Montagnard Foundation Inc. (MFI), circulated its version of events.

A third line of reporting by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other agencies avoided MFI exaggerations but challenged Vietnam on its denials, minimizations and cover up. On April 29, the World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission weighed in with a thoughtful analysis piece involving testimony from eyewitnesses. On the same day, Amnesty International began to challenge Vietnam on its crude policies toward Montagnards and published a list of eight who had died in the demonstrations.

The Vietnamese government first responded to these events with silence, denials, and minimization, then moved to admitting that a problem existed. Vietnam blamed the conflict on naive Montagnards -- who had learning disabilities, according to one source, and were easily duped. They then painted themselves as victims of an evil plot of hostile outside forces.

Just over two weeks after the events, Vietnam took foreign diplomats and journalists to the location of the unrest. The government clearly feels in control of this propaganda war by allowing foreign journalists, including Americans, to check things out for themselves. Yet with the restrictions imposed on the journalists and diplomats, experienced observers believe the truth about what happened was concealed.

During this time, a church event became the propaganda centerpiece used to illustrate that everything was fine on the religion front. The recognized Evangelical Church of Vietnam (South) planned a special meeting to mark the official recognition of the 11th church in Gia Lai Province. Local government officials tried to dissuade church leaders from holding the meeting.

However, when the Plei R’Ngol church went ahead with this meeting, the government filmed the event and gave it inordinate exposure during the evening national TV newscast on April 13. The government has made repeated references to this event since then, but they have recognized only 16 of the more than 750 church groups that functioned in Gia Lia and Dak Lak before 2002.

Widely blamed for a part in inciting the 2001 Montagnard demonstrations, the MFI reinforced this perception when it released information on April 9 that demonstrations would occur the following day. MFI also phoned foreign reporters in Hanoi on April 9, urging them to go to the Central Highlands.

At midweek, they released a list via the Internet of the villages of 139,000 demonstrators who they said had counted the cost and joined the demonstrations. Some MFI releases talked of 150,000 demonstrators. By April 12, MFI released news that 400 Christians had been killed. Several Christian news services published this figure and related “news” in additional releases without further confirmation.

According to a respected Vietnam watcher, three problems emerged from the MFI reporting. First, the announcement ahead of the event made MFI a natural scapegoat for Vietnam. At the May 12 opening session of Vietnam’s National Assembly, government officials predictably blamed the Montagnard Foundation Inc. for organizing the protests, according to an ABC Radio Australia News report.

Second, the MFI’s constant reference to Montagnard Christians in the context of the conflict is misleading and causes great hardship for many in the Montagnard Protestant church who choose to struggle for justice in other ways. The risk to them became evident in a speech Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung delivered to the National Assembly in which he called for authorities to combat plots and hostile forces among the Montagnards. Vietnamese leaders vowed to punish anyone inciting further unrest in the Central Highlands.

Finally, the exaggerations of MFI diverted attention from legitimate advocacy for the Montagnards. For instance, Human Rights Watch released a report on April 14 which covered the events of the previous days and included solid documentation of heavy repression in the months leading up to the Easter weekend outbreak. HRW followed on April 22 with a significant release detailing events of April 10 and 11, based on credible sources. It reported that at least 10 people had been killed, but admitted it was impossible to cite accurate casualty figures and therefore called for international observers to investigate.

On April 29, the World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission, citing primary sources, released Understanding the April 2004 Demonstrations in Vietnam’s Central Highlands. The same day, Amnesty International reported and listed details on eight killings.

On April 30, Vietnam celebrated the 29th anniversary of the “liberation” of the country in 1975. Ironically, Vietnam’s oppressed minorities are less liberated today than ever before.

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Copyright 2004 Compass Direct

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Christian Couple Escape from Egypt

Coptic husband, convert wife leave separately.

by Barbara G. Baker

ISTANBUL, May 17 (Compass) -- Thirteen months after Egypt jailed and tortured a Coptic Christian pharmacist for marrying a former Muslim woman, Boulos Farid Rezek-Allah Awad has finally been allowed to emigrate from Egypt to Canada.

Rezek-Allah flew out of the Cairo International Airport to Canada in March, shortly before his Canadian immigration visa was due to expire. A few weeks earlier, his wife Enas Yehya Abdel Aziz had escaped the country to claim refugee status abroad.

Egyptian security police officials told Rezek-Allah last November that he was permanently blacklisted from leaving Egypt. They vowed to track down and punish his wife for her “illegal” marriage to a Christian.

In a telephone interview from an undisclosed location in Canada, Rezek-Allah told Compass that he assumed that the Egyptian authorities somehow learned that his wife had managed to slip out of Egypt without being identified and arrested.

“So after they lost hope of catching Enas, they allowed me to depart from Egypt,” he said. “But I am not sure that even now they know to which country she went, and where she is now.”

Rezek-Allah was arrested in February 2003 by security police in Cairo for breaking Egyptian law by secretly marrying a Muslim woman who had converted to Christianity. Islamic law forbids a Christian man to marry a Muslim woman in Egypt, where Muslim citizens are not allowed to change their religion.

Since Rezek-Allah and his wife had been accepted to immigrate to Canada, they kept their wedding secret, living separately while waiting for their immigration papers from the Canadian Embassy.

But before they could leave, Egyptian police authorities obtained copies of his wife’s new Christian I.D. and marriage certificate, revealing that she had been baptized three years earlier and then married Rezek-Allah in May 2002.

Rezek-Allah was interrogated under torture for weeks at Cairo’s El-Shobra police station, where officers hung him by his arms and beat him, trying to find out his wife’s whereabouts. But Enas had gone into strict hiding, foiling police attempts to track her down.

After his release from Tora Prison on June 1, Rezek-Allah was kept under continual surveillance and intimidation by the police. During his two subsequent attempts to leave for Canada, through the Cairo airport in August and across the Libyan border in November, he was turned back by Egyptian authorities.

Rezek-Allah said that he himself did not know all the details surrounding his wife’s recent escape from Egypt. But after she managed to leave the country, the Canadian government granted her refugee status, citing the religious persecution she faced in her homeland for converting from Islam to Christianity.

She has since undergone leg surgery, related to injuries in a car accident before she left Egypt. After recovering from the operation, she plans to enter English language classes in her new homeland.

Her husband, meanwhile, is studying for his final pharmacy-license exams in Canada this coming August.

Rezek-Allah admitted that it had been a long, stressful 13 months since he was arrested and separated from his wife under the threat of never being reunited. “But I think now, I begin to forget all this,” he told Compass. “God has healed my mind and my heart.”

“Enas and I know that God is good,” Rezek-Allah said, “and that He will complete doing every good thing in us and for us.”

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Copyright 2004 Compass Direct

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Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu Calls for Review of U.N.'s Role in Indonesia's Annexation of West Papua

Statement By South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

For many years the people of South Africa suffered under the yoke of oppression and apartheid. Many people continue to suffer brutal oppression, where their fundamental dignity as human beings is denied. One such people is the people of West Papua.

The people of West Papua have been denied their basic human rights, including their right to self-determination. Their cry for justice and freedom has fallen largely on deaf ears.

An estimated 100,000 people have died in West Papua since Indonesia took control of the territory in 1963.

It is with deep concern I have learned about the United Nations' role in the take-over of West Papua by Indonesia, and in the now-discredited "Act of 'Free' Choice" of 1969. Instead of a proper referendum, where every adult male and female had the opportunity to vote by secret ballot on whether or not they wished to be part of Indonesia, just over 1,000 people were hand-picked and coerced into declaring for Indonesia in public in a climate of fear and repression.

The U.N. had just 16 observers to this Act for a country the size of Spain. The then Secretary-General's Representative reported on the conduct of the Act to the U.N. General Assembly in 1969, which noted his report on 19 November of that year.

One of the senior U.N. officials at the time, Chakravarthy Narasimhan, has since called the process a "whitewash".

A strong United Nations will be capable of, among other things, acknowledging and correcting its mistakes.

I would like to add my voice to growing international calls for the U.N. Secretary General to instigate a review of the U.N.'s conduct in relation to the now-discredited "Act of 'Free' Choice".

I will keep the people of West Papua in my prayers, and I would like to extend my best wishes and moral support to them in their hour of need.

-- Archbishop Desmond Tutu -- February 23, 2004

In issuing this statement, Archbishop Tutu joins hundreds of other eminent persons, parliamentarians, scholars and others who are supporting an international campaign to urge a U.N. review of its role in Indonesia's Annexation of Papua. For details on the campaign, visit: http://westpapuaaction.buz.org/unreview

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Speaking tour May 13^th-28^th

US Involvement in the History of West Papua and the Human Rights Situation Today

For more information on the West Papua Action Network: wpan@redwire.us

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