delivered by Kok Ksor

Thank you Mr. Chairman.

My name is Kok Ksor and I am honored to speak today on behalf of the Transnational Radical Party, also as a member of it’s General Council.

I was born in Vietnam’s central highlands, a region of the world that is home to one of the oldest races of indigenous people in South East Asia.

Vietnam has ratified the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights in 1982. Despite this, it has not implemented any of the provisions contained in the Pact. On the contrary, it is pursuing policies that go against the rights of its people, who, far from being considered citizens, are forced to live the life of subjects. The international community is supporting Vietnam, but is not effectively ensuring the respect of human rights.

For the last 28 years, the Government of Vietnam has forced the Degar off their ancestral lands and condemned us to a life of poverty. A life that could be rich both culturally and economically and that could prosper in peace and fraternity.

For the last 3 years, the Vietnamese government has continuously carried out repressive paramilitary operations persecuting our people in our ancestral central highlands.

The Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of the Degar Montagnard people have deeply worsened as a consequence of the presence in the region of thousands of Military officers, who have provoked a wave of persecutions, which includes summary executions, imprisonments, disappearances, coercive sterilizations, electric shock, torture, rape and religious persecution.

Our culture is based on a harmonious relationship with nature and its forces. For thousands of years, we have managed those lands according to traditions and customs, which have been completely swept away by the Government of Vietnam. Since 1975, all the lands inhabited by the Montagnards in the Central Highlands of Vietnam have been expropriated by the Government of Vietnam, with no recognition of our ownership rights nor of our traditional customs and social arrangements.

Furthermore, our culture and society have suffered alien impositions that have affected our tradition as well our faith. Our people are imprisoned, tortured and even murdered by the Vietnamese authorities if they practice Christianity.

Let me quote from a report issued on 2 December 2003, by Human Rights Watch: “124 Montagnards… are currently serving prison terms of up to 13 years for non-violent political activism, organizing Christian gatherings or attempting to seek asylum in Cambodia”.

[In May 2003, the US International Commission for Religious Freedom stated, “the increased repression of religious freedom has been reportedly sanctioned at the highest levels of the Vietnamese government.”]

This persecution was also publicly condemned by UN Special Envoy Peter Leupretch last December.

Of urgent concern today is that the Vietnamese government has continued to defy the 2002 Concluding Observations of the Human Rights Committee by – still refusing international human rights monitors access to the Central Highlands.

Mr. Chairman:

On behalf of the Transnational Radical Party and on behalf of hundreds of thousands of Montagnards inside Vietnam I urge the United Nations to take emergency measures to stop the repression in the Central Highlands. It goes against our culture, traditions and economy, the very basis of human dignity.

The TRP invites the Commission to urge Vietnam to open the Central Highlands to missions of observers that can once and for all assess the situation in the region and propose possible solutions to the imposition of a model that is foreign to our culture and society and that is impoverishing thousands of people, thus depriving them of the possibility to live a decent life.

Our people cannot wait much longer. Urgent action is need to make Vietnam cease the persecution. The Montagnards inside the Central Highlands, today know that the Transnational Radical Party is speaking about them at the Commission on Human Rights and await a word of hope.

I thank you Mr. Chairman