Mr. President: Remember Us!

ICC Note: As President Bush prepares to host Vietnam’s President, a group familiar with Vietnam ’s abuse of Christians publicly asks President Bush to remember the persecution in Vietnam .

By Scott Johnson

6/18/07 Vietnam (Epoch Times) – Twelve bus loads of Degar Montagnards arrived outside Lafayette Square across from the White House at about 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, June 16. Some 700, dressed in white shirts with Montagnard Foundation logos, they walked in orderly fashion carrying Montagnard and U.S. flags and signs. The signs said, “President Bush Remember us” and ” Vietnam stop killing Degar Christians…”

Kok Ksor, President of the Montagnard Foundation, addressed the crowd and made a plea to President Bush followed by a mass prayer vigil.

“We, the proud indigenous Degar Montagnard people as members of the Montagnard Foundation stand here today in front of the White House to speak publicly on behalf of our brothers and sisters who suffer persecution inside Vietnam . We are here to ask President George W. Bush to remember us in his upcoming discussions with Vietnamese [leader] Nguyen Minh Triet who is visiting the White House next week and also for the Vietnamese [leader] to cease his government from persecuting our people.”

During the long Vietnam War, an estimated 100,000 Montagnards served with the U.S. military and by the end of the war over a quarter of our population, over 200,000 people had died, including half of all adult males being killed, according to Ksor. He described what happened to his people when the communist took over Vietnam in 1975.

“…the communists enacted a brutal revenge against our race, killing or imprisoning our leaders and Christian pastors in brutal re-education camps. Ever since, the Vietnamese government has continued land exploitation, Christian persecution, torture, killings and imprisonment of our people. The communist regime in Hanoi continues today to torture and kill our house church Christians who resist joining the ‘official’ church. Hundreds of our people remain in prison for peacefully demonstrating for human rights, for spreading Christianity or for fleeing to Cambodia . Many of our prisoners have been specifically beaten to cause a slow death from internal injuries.”

Ksor next described the extra security measures the communists Vietnamese use in the central highlands on the Montagnards: “surveillance, arrests, beatings, electric shock torture, imprisonment and murder….”

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