US embassy cable - 04HOCHIMINHCITY1491

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 HO CHI MINH CITY 001491 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PHUM, SOCI, PREL, PGOV, PREF, KIRF, VM, ETMIN, HUMANR 
SUBJECT: ETHNIC MINORITY ISSUES IN VIETNAM'S CENTRAL HIGHLAND DAK 
LAK PROVINCE 
 
REF:  A) HCMC 1464 B) 1173 HCMC C) HCMC 1140 
 
1. (SBU) Summary:  The Central Highlands Province of Dak Lak 
appears to be following Hanoi's directives to improve the economic 
and educational status of ethnic minorities.  Discrimination and a 
plantation economy have left the ethnic minorities poor and 
disenfranchised.  Provincial officials claim to have cut in- 
migration, initiated land reforms and begun to tackle the 
education deficit in the minority community.  Local officials 
downplayed the issue of minorities crossing into Cambodia, stating 
that migration was a result of economic difficulties not political 
oppression.  A visit to two villages showed some progress but 
continued official suspicion towards minorities.  End Summary. 
 
2. (SBU) A joint HCMC-Hanoi team visited Buon Ma Thuot, the 
capital of the Central Highlands Province of Dak Lak November 15- 
17 to review ethnic minority issues.  Dak Lak was a center of 
ethnic minority unrest in 2001 and 2004 as was neighboring Gia 
Lai, which we visited in September (refs B and C).  During the 
visit, we discussed ethnic minority issues with the Chairman of 
the People's Committee, the Provincial Director of the Ministry of 
Public Security, a number of officials at the Department of 
Planning and Investment and the Heads of the Committees for 
Minority and Religious Affairs.  The team also visited the 
Highlands' Tay Nguyen University, coffee and rubber plantations -- 
key employers of ethnic minorities -- a boarding school for ethnic 
minorities and two ethnic minority villages, one without our GVN 
minders.  (Issues of religious freedom and the province's economic 
outlook are covered in refs A and septel respectively.) 
 
3. (SBU) Dak Lak Province has changed considerably since 
unification in 1975, but left its ethnic minority population 
disenfranchised economically and politically in the process. 
Until 1990, ethnic minorities comprised a majority in the 
province.  By 2004, the province's 510,000 ethnic minority 
inhabitants comprised less than 30 percent of the population. 
This in-migration of ethnic Vietnamese (Kinh) also raised the 
population five-fold from 350,000 in 1975 to 1.7 million in 2004. 
 
4. (SBU) Plantation cash-crop agriculture predominates in Dak Lak. 
Local officials told us that the province expanded from 7,000 
hectares of coffee under cultivation in 1975 to 164,000 hectares 
today, and Dak Lak now produces 60 percent of Vietnam's coffee. 
In 1975 the province had 2,000 hectares of rubber under 
cultivation; 23,000 hectares today.  Thirty years ago the province 
had no pepper, cotton or cashew industry; now it is a large 
producer of these products.  As reported septel, ethnic Kinh, not 
the province's ethnic minorities, have benefited most from these 
new agricultural opportunities.  All the company directors we met, 
both state-owned and private, said they employed only a small 
percentage of ethnic minorities. 
 
5. (SBU) Mr. A Ma Phong, Head of the Provincial Committee for 
Minority Affairs (CMA), acknowledged that the province's economic 
development had largely bypassed ethnic minorities.  Some 60 
percent of persons in the province under the poverty line are 
ethnic minority, although minorities comprise less than 30 percent 
of the population.  Similarly, only 48 percent of the ethnic 
minority households are electrified.  Overall, 72 percent of 
households in the province are wired to the grid. 
 
6. (SBU) Mr. Mai Van Thin, Vice Dean of Tay Nguyen University, 
told us that 11 percent of the University's recently expanded 
student body of 6,370 are ethnic minority students drawn from 
throughout the Central Highlands.  Since its founding in 1977, 13 
percent of the University's roughly 7,700 graduates have been 
ethnic minority students. 
 
New initiatives 
--------------- 
 
7. (SBU) People's Committee Chairman Nguyen Van Lang and CMA Chief 
Phong stressed that the province has begun to implement measures 
mandated by Hanoi to address economic and educational disparities 
between the ethnic Kinh and ethnic minorities: 
 
-- As of 2004, the province banned in-migration from other 
provinces.  Chairman Lang added that, in recent years, in- 
migration had been ebbing as land became scarcer and the price of 
coffee declined. 
 
-- the province has banned land transactions between ethnic 
minorities and majority Kinh.  The province wishes to stem the 
practice of Montagnards selling their land to ethnic Vietnamese 
only to be left with nothing after a few years, forcing them to 
press for additional land handouts from the Government.  In tandem 
with this policy, the province is focusing on improving the 
productivity of minority farmers. 
 
-- each of the 38 poorest communes in the province -- most, if not 
all, ethnic minority -- will receive a 500 million Dong (USD 
31,750) budgetary supplement for development.  Children in these 
communities also will receive free education, free schoolbooks and 
free medical care.  The province is in the process of establishing 
13 boarding schools for ethnic minority children to serve these 
communities.  These schools will feed into the ten high school- 
level boarding schools the State has established for ethnic 
minorities, the CMA Head said.  The province also is considering 
establishing remedial training centers for older ethnic minority 
workers to enhance their competitiveness in the labor market, 
Chairman Lang told us. 
 
-- Of the 1,500 new teachers being trained in the province, one- 
third are ethnic minority, Chairman Lang said.  He added that Dak 
Lak has begun to develop a bilingual curriculum for some of its 
minority students. 
 
-- The CMA Chairman said that the province has initiated a survey 
to identify which ethnic minority families have substandard 
housing or insufficient land to maintain themselves.  The state 
will ensure that all ethnic minority families have at least two 
thousand square meters of rice paddy and one hectare of other 
arable land.  Those who live in forested areas will receive 10 
hectares of forest. 
 
-- Some 200 families have been given nine million Dong (USD 570) 
each to build new homes, the CMA Chairman told us.  Five million 
Dong comes from the central budget and four million from the 
provincial budget.  The province has identified 16,612 households 
that require housing assistance. 
 
Montagnard border flight and Visas 93 
------------------------------------- 
 
8. (SBU) Provincial officials downplayed the problem of ethnic 
minorities crossing into Cambodia, calling it a "normal 
phenomenon."  They maintained that the bulk of border crossings 
are family or business oriented visits to neighboring ethnic 
minority villages in Cambodia.  Many crossed "erroneously" as the 
border is not well demarcated.  The Province's Ministry of Public 
Security Director did not raise the issue of Montagnard flight 
with us, even though we broached border control issues with him. 
However, a pastor affiliated with the GVN-recognized Southern 
Evangelical Church of Vietnam told us in late October that police 
and military units still are heavily deployed along the Cambodian 
frontier to prevent ethnic minority cross-border flight. 
 
9. (SBU) Chairman Lang acknowledged that "some" Montagnards sought 
to flee because of economic hardship in the province.  He and CMA 
Head Phong maintained that many ethnic minority members had taken 
out large bank loans to plant coffee only to struggle when prices 
declined sharply.  Only a small minority has been encouraged to 
flee by "Dega" separatists such as Kok Ksor and the North Carolina- 
based Montagnard Foundation, who hoped to use the refugee issue to 
embarrass Vietnam. 
 
10. (SBU) The People's Committee Chairman and the CMA Chief 
asserted that any ethnic minority individuals who wish to leave 
and join their families in the United States would be allowed to 
do so.  They denied that any Montagnards are being prevented from 
applying for passports or are having their applications buried in 
procedure.  The only exception was for those individuals who broke 
the law (NFI) or had unpaid bank debt.  Chairman Lang recommended 
that ConGen notify the HCMC External Relations Office (ERO) of 
pending Montagnard follow-to-join cases.  He said that HCMC ERO 
would then work with the province to facilitate processing. 
 
Village Visits 
-------------- 
 
11. (SBU) An unscheduled stop without our minders at a roadside 
ethnic minority village some 40 kilometers south of Buon Ma Thuot 
confirmed that some progress was being made.  The village was 
relatively prosperous and was at least partially electrified. 
Villagers told us that many had sufficient land -- a few families 
were making between two and three million Dong (USD 120-180) per 
month, others only one-tenth that amount.  The small community had 
at least 15 students in high school; many of them were hoping to 
go on to college. 
 
12. (SBU) However, even in this relatively successful minority 
village, not all was well.  Within ten minutes of our arrival, 
plainclothes police appeared and ordered us to depart, informing 
us that it was a "banned area."  We later learned that at least 
some members of that community had participated in the unrest in 
April 2004.   The province planned a second, "typical" village 
visit.  The 46-person community clearly was relatively prosperous. 
However, we later found out that the village elder was a member of 
the province's Fatherland Front committee and an atypical ethnic 
minority member of the Province's political elite. 
 
Impact of Drought; Low Coffee Prices 
------------------------------------ 
 
13.  (SBU) Provincial officials were fretting over the impact of 
drought on the province's economy.  Nguyen Xuan Huong, Deputy 
Director of the Dak Lak Department of Planning and Investment 
(DPI), told us that up to 80 percent of the province's farmland 
was under threat. The DPI foresaw loses of 600 billion Dong (USD 
38 million) in the agricultural sector, roughly 15 percent of the 
province's USD 250 million export earnings in 2003.  Locals in the 
province also continue to agonize over depressed coffee prices.  A 
local producer told us that a kilo of beans sells for 7,500 Dong 
(USD 48 cents), down 35 percent from only a few years ago.  He 
told us that, at its peak in 1994, Dak Lak coffee would sell for 
over 40,000 Dong a kilo (over USD 3.00 at 1994 official exchange 
rates.) 
 
14. (SBU) Comment:  Most, if not all, the province's initiatives 
appeared to be have been launched or expanded since ethnic 
minority unrest first flared in 2001 or since the second wave of 
protests in 2004.  The good news is that local authorities, who in 
the past have denied that anything was amiss, now seem to be 
trying to do something about the problem.  However, their remedies 
will take time to have an impact, even if properly implemented. 
That said, over the near term, drought and depressed agricultural 
prices could heighten difficulties facing both ethnic Kinh and 
ethnic minority residents reliant on cash crops such as coffee. 
It is far from clear if the local and central governments' 
economic and education programs are sufficient to undo years of 
neglect and discrimination that contributed to the Montagnards' 
current difficulties.  Dak Lak provincial officials did not show 
willingness to partner with NGOs to bring in development 
expertise. 
 
WINNICK