US embassy cable - 04HOCHIMINHCITY1173

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 HO CHI MINH CITY 001173 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR EAP/BCLTV, DRL, DRL/IRD 
STATE PLEASE PASS TO SFRC STAFFER FJANNUZI 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PHUM, SOCI, PREL, PGOV, VM, HUMANR, ETMIN 
SUBJECT: SFRC STAFFER FOCUSES ON PLIGHT OF VIETNAM'S CENTRAL 
HIGHLAND MINORITIES 
 
REF:  A) HCMC 1140; B) HANOI 2594 
 
1.  (SBU) Summary:  Paternalism, racism, bureaucratic ineptitude, 
communist orthodoxy, economic and educational marginalization, and 
war legacy issues were all on display when SFRC staffer Frank 
Jannuzi assessed the status of ethnic minorities -- Montagnards -- 
in the Central Highlands province of Gia Lai September 2-4.  In 
this mix, religion is but one of many fault lines between the 
Montagnard minority and the ethnic Vietnamese (Kinh) majority.  It 
was apparent that the Highland's Montagnards were second-class 
citizens in their traditional lands, creating an environment in 
which ethnic minority unrest and protests -- such as those that 
occurred in 2004 and 2001 -- could easily flare. 
 
2. (SBU) GVN officials told Staffdel that they are committed to 
address problems affecting Montagnards; Staffdel did see some 
efforts to close the educational and economic gap between the 
ethnic minorities and the Kinh.  However, those efforts fall far 
short of addressing the political, social, and religious 
disenfranchisement of the Montagnards.  Moreover, despite 
indications to the contrary from the GVN in Hanoi, local officials 
told Staffdel that there would be no halt to in-migration of 
ethnic Kinh to the province.  Until the GVN adopts a broader and 
more creative approach, we can expect ethnic minority tensions in 
the Highlands to fester.  End Summary 
 
3. (SBU) The status of ethnic minorities was a key focus of Senate 
Foreign Relations Committee staffer Frank Jannuzi, who, 
accompanied by HCMC PolOff visited Pleiku, administrative capital 
of the Central Highland province of Gia Lai September 2-4.  (Gia 
Lai was one of the epicenters of ethnic minority unrest in 2004 
and 2001.)  In Pleiku, Jannuzi met with Chairman of the Gia Lai 
People's Committee, the Deputy Director of the centrally 
administered Central Highlands Development Authority and the 
Provincial Committee for Religious Affairs (CRA).  Jannuzi also 
met with the Directors of state-owned coffee and rubber 
plantations as well as the Chairman of the largest privately owned 
company in the province.  Staffdel also visited two Montagnard 
communities, albeit in the constant company of GVN officials. 
(Note: at the invitation of the GVN, Michael Sullivan, a U.S. 
journalist for National Public Radio based in Hanoi, accompanied 
the Staffdel throughout the visit to Pleiku.)  Ref a reports in 
more detail on freedom of religion issues raised during the 
Staffdel visit. 
 
Separate and unequal 
-------------------- 
 
4. (SBU) Over the past 15 years, GVN-planned and spontaneous 
migration of ethnic Vietnamese (Kinh) and the explosion of cash 
crop cultivation -- coffee, rubber, and pepper -- have transformed 
the demographics and the economy of the region.  Once an 
overwhelming majority, GVN officials told us that the Montagnards 
now comprise no more than 45 percent of the population in the 
province.  Economic and demographic pressures and competition for 
land have forced them to abandon their traditional semi-nomadic, 
slash and burn agricultural lifestyle.  The Chairman of the 
People's Committee told Staffdel that 85 percent of Montagnards 
are settled in fixed settlements scattered throughout the 
province. 
 
5. (SBU) The Staffdel visit underscored how little Montagnards 
have benefited from changes in the region.  Physically, they 
largely remain isolated from the Kinh majority.  Even the 
Montagnard village that the GVN sought to showcase to Staffdel was 
moldering, backward and set far from major roads, shops, schools 
and jobs (and the Kinh).  In general, the three Montagnard 
villages that PolOff visited (two with Staffdel were clustered 
near the rice fields and cash crop plantations in which they work. 
 
6. (SBU) Educationally, the ethnic Minorities appeared to lag far 
behind their Kinh counterparts.  Many Montagnards spoke only 
limited Vietnamese at best; the directors of the rubber plantation 
and privately owned furniture factory told Staffdel that some of 
their Montagnard hires were illiterate.  Both companies were 
forced to run in-house training programs to bring ethnic minority 
hires up to minimum standards.  In contrast, Kinh migrants had 
adequate educational skills; one young Vietnamese Kinh told 
Staffdel that he had recently migrated to Pleiku from Northern 
Vietnam and was able to find well paying employment in a local 
factory.  He added that Montagnard hires in his firm "usually 
don't work out" because of cultural and educational differences. 
 
7. (SBU) Economically, the Montagnards lag behind the Kinh, in 
part because of their educational backwardness, in part because of 
past GVN neglect.  In the fields, they have not been able to apply 
more sophisticated agricultural techniques, thus earning less than 
their Kinh counterparts.  In the companies of the region, the 
Montagnards hold the bulk of the low-skill, low-pay jobs.  In 
Montagnard villages, the local kiosks are owned and run by Kinh 
migrants who return to Kinh-majority areas at night.  Staffdel was 
told repeatedly that the Montagnard's lacked the educational 
skills, financial savvy and capital needed to move up the economic 
ladder. 
 
8. (SBU) Local GVN officials acknowledged the economic disparity 
between Kinh and Montagnards.  They noted that it created a 
vicious cycle in which the Kinh, out-earning the Montagnards, use 
their profits to buy land from the Montagnards.  Over the long- 
term, this phenomenon exacerbates the ethnic minorities economic 
plight and sense of dispossession. 
 
New economic pressures ahead? 
----------------------------- 
 
9. (SBU) Shifts in the cash crops business also foreshadow new 
pressures on those at the bottom of the economic ladder in the 
highlands.  The director of a major state-owned coffee plantation 
told Staffdel that, in response to depressed world prices for 
Robusta coffee -- caused at least in part by over-planting in 
Vietnam --the company might be forced to restructure.  Their plans 
calls for shedding direct-hire labor and land, outsourcing 
cultivation and focusing on higher value-added activities such as 
processing and distribution.  While not stated explicitly, it was 
clear that the bulk of the 30-35 percent of the company's 2,000 
employees that were ethnic minorities hold those low skill jobs 
that could be lost.  The director proffered that released workers 
would be offered coffee leaseholds, but they would be required to 
sell their product back to the company in an exclusive contract. 
 
10. (SBU) A similar phenomenon appears to be occurring at the 
large state-owned rubber plantation.  Even at this relatively 
progressive and expanding company -- two thirds of the 1800 direct- 
hire employees are Montagnard -- a local ethnic minority villager 
told Staffdel that the company froze permanent hires.  The company 
is now only employing contract labor, at monthly wages that are 
almost half that of the average direct-hire salary. 
 
11. (SBU) The ethnic Minorities also were politically under- 
represented.  All the leading GVN and economic figures that met 
with Staffdel were ethnic Kinh.  Most of them were migrants from 
provinces outside the Central Highlands. 
 
12. (SBU) Religion also reflects the minority/majority divide. 
Protestantism essentially is a minority religion.  According to a 
trusted church contact, at least 90 percent of the province's 
100,000 Protestants are ethnic minorities.  Similarly, the chief 
Parish Priest of the Catholic Church in Pleiku told Staffdel that 
two thirds of the 180,000 Catholics in the province are 
Montagnard. 
 
The GVN:  we are working on it 
------------------------------ 
 
13. (SBU) Deputy Chairman Ha of the centrally administered Central 
Highlands Development Authority told Staffdel that the GVN 
launched programs to address the educational and employment 
disadvantages of the Montagnards in the early 1990s.  He said 
that, recently, Hanoi has become seized of the matter and became 
"very strongly determined to solve" these issues, even though the 
Montagnards "obsolete traditions and rituals" hindered progress. 
He and other local officials highlighted: 
 
-- agricultural extension programs focused at assisting ethnic 
minorities to improve staple food yields, 
-- priority land distribution for Montagnards; 
-- a separate system of subsidized boarding schools for Montagnard 
children, and, 
-- preferential admission into local universities. 
 
14. (SBU) However, beyond limited educational and economic 
measures, there was little new in the GVN pitch.  They maintained 
that "outside reactionary forces" from "FULRO" and the "Dega 
Protestant" movement were exploiting and magnifying minority 
discontent to foment anti-GVN and separatist activities.  (FULRO 
was a Montagnard guerilla movement that continued to resist 
Hanoi's authority in the Central Highlands well after unification 
in 1975.  FULRO formally ended its armed struggle in 1992.) 
 
No end to in-migration 
---------------------- 
 
15. (SBU) Every GVN official made it clear that, despite 
indications to the contrary in Hanoi (ref b), there would be no 
halt to in-migration of ethnic Kinh to the Highlands.  They 
explained that each province had a GVN-approved "master migration 
plan" that guided local leaders on land allocation and subsidies 
to GVN-approved migrants. They indicated that GVN-supported 
migrants receive subsidies of 5,000,000 Dong (USD 315) per hectare 
of GVN-allocated land that they clear.   According to the Chairman 
of the Gia Lai People's Committee Pham The Dung, the province 
needed another 400,000 migrants to "fulfill its economic 
potential." 
 
16. (SBU) Dung sought to make a distinction between planned, GNV- 
supported migration and "spontaneous" migration outside the plan. 
According to Dung, some 50,000 to 70,000 Kinh migrants have 
settled in Gia Lai in recent years.  He explained that, these 
migrants have been a significant source of friction with the 
Montagnards, as they tend to encroach on "vacant" lands that the 
ethnic Minorities consider theirs.  Nonetheless, local authorities 
would take no action to expel them or to deter them from settling 
by denying them residency permits.  The People's Committee 
Chairman concluded that, despite the friction they cause, the 
province needed their labor to "fulfill our potential." 
 
Comment 
------- 
 
17.  (SBU) The good news is that even local authorities, which in 
the past have denied that anything in the province was amiss, now 
recognize that they have a serious problem on their hands.  The 
bad news is that their solution -- educational and economic 
solutions based on party-approved economic plans -- will do little 
to address the root causes of ethnic minority disaffection.  Real 
change will require policy-making creativity, a willingness to 
provide ethnic minorities with a real voice in decisions that 
affect the province, including migration, tolerance and respect 
for minority culture -- including religion -- and a willingness to 
partner with NGOs and other international organizations to bring 
in vital development expertise and funding. 
 
18. (U) Staffdel Jannuzi did not have the opportunity to review 
this message prior to sending. 
 
WINNICK