Vietnam: Degar (Montagnard) Christian Villagers are Being Killed by the Vietnamese Government for their Farmlands

(Montagnard Foundation Inc.)

The Vietnamese civilians and police came to the home of our Christian brother, Siu Krot, in the village of Buon Sup “B” town of Ea Sup, district of Ea Sup in the province of Daklak, several times to ask him to sell his farmland to them but Siu Krot refused.  He could not sell this piece of land to them because it is the only source of food for his family.

On January 7, 2009, our Christian brother, Siu Krot age 65, went to work on his farm not too far from his village early in the morning.  When he got to his farm, a group of Vietnamese civilian and Vietnamese security police were already there waiting for him at his hut.  The other Degar family who was working on their farm close by saw there were around 10 Vietnamese civilians and a couple of Vietnamese security police but they did not bother to go there and ask.

At Siu Krot’s hut this group of Vietnamese asked him again to sell them his farmland but he refused.  They then proceeded to take him away from his farm for about 3 kilometers then they killed him by whacking him with their machete on the back of his head, on his forehead, on his nose, both sides of his cheek and beat him up until he died.  Then they tied a big rock to his corpse and sunk him to the bottom of the river.

In the evening of that day, the Degar family whose farm was adjacent to Siu Krot’s asked his family if they knew what kind of problems they had with the Vietnamese civilians and police.  The family was surprised because they did not have any problem at all except the Vietnamese civilians and police came to their house asking to buy their farmland in the previous days.

The family was waiting for Siu Krot that night but he did not come home.  So, early in the morning of January 8, 2009, his son and family went to the farm to see what had happened to him.  On their way to the farm, when they got to the river, they were stopped by Vietnamese police.  They could see that a doctor was performing an autopsy on the corpse of Siu Krot along the riverbank.  The doctor took all of his intestines, heart, and liver and so on from his body and then he threw them back inside and told his family to take the corpse home and burry it.  We do not understand why they did this?

The Vietnamese security police confiscated money from an old sick mother that was sent from her son living in the United States.

The Vietnamese government is not only confiscating the ancestral lands of the indigenous Degar peoples but they are also confiscating money sent back by Degar refugees in the United States to relatives in the Central Highlands.