WHAT
IS THE BAJARAKA?
BAJARAKA is a combination of the key letters of Bahnar, Jarai, Rade,
and Kaho the names of the four major tribes of the Montagnard/Degar
peoples of P.M.S.I. (Pay Montagnard du Sud Indochinois) the country
of the Montagnard of South Indochina. Later, P.M.S.I. was known as
the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. BAJARAKA is the name of the
Degar peoples’ movement that resisted against the forced assimilation
of Vietnamese government after the French left Indochina in 1954. The
goal of the BAJARAKA was to have a separate nation with its own
administration and army. What it really means is the independence for
the Degar peoples.
WHEN
BAJARAKA WAS CREATED?
BAJARAKA movement started by a group of restless young Degar peoples
in 1957 after the Diem government brought hundreds of thousand of
Vietnamese from the North into P.M.S.I. in order to occupy our
territories and to begin his assimilative program. They use word
assimilation only to soften the language but in reality and
accordingly to their action, they were applying the
genocidal-program. Since 1975, the Hanoi government has been carried
out the same genocidal program towards our peoples. BAJARAKA movement
went into real action of demonstration in September 1958. Diem
crushed the BAJARAKA movement with army and tank, murdered its
peoples and imprisoned all of its leaders such as Y-Bham Enuol, Y-Thih
Eban, Y-Ju Eban, Nay Luet and many others. At this time, the US
government knew about what was going on between our peoples and the
Vietnamese but they did not have any intention to stop Diem
government from destroying our peoples, our villages, our culture,
and our traditional way of life. Until February 12th, 1964, after the
overthrowing of Ngo Dinh Diem, the American Embassy convinced the
government of General Nguyen Khanh to release Mr. Y-Bham Enuol and
the rest of his colleagues from prison.
WHERE
BAJARAKA BEGAN?
A group
of young peoples from Rade and Jarai tribes, Y-Thih Eban, Y-Dhon
Adrong, Y-Bham Enuol, Y-Ju Eban, and Nay Luet began to organize
BAJARAKA movement at Buon Ale A, the province of Daklak. When Diem
found out about what they were doing, he transferred all of them to
Pleiku province. Over here, some more young peoples from other tribes
joined the movement and Y-Bham Enuol was elected as a chairman of the
organization. When they had a peaceful demonstration to ask Diem
government to give back all the powers of governing our own peoples
and territories, Diem responded with force. They used offensive war
materials to crush the demonstration and arrested our leaders Y-Bham
Enuol, Paul Nur, Nay Luet, Y-Thih Eban, Siu Sip Y-Ju Eban, Touneh Yoh
on September 15th, 1958. All of them were sent to Dalat and put them
in underground solitary cells for three months. After that, they sent
them to Hue and put them in the prison of criminal.
WHY
BAJARAKA WAS ORGANIZED?
After
Viet Minh defeated the French in 1954, Vietnam was divided at the
17th parallel. Ho Chi Minh assumed the leadership in the North and
Bao Dai assumed the leadership in the South. On the general election
of South Vietnam in 1955 between Ngo Dinh Diem and Bao Dai, with the
help of the United States of America Ngo Dinh Diem was elected as the
first president for the Republic of South Vietnam. At this time, the
U.S. government knew that the P.M.S.I. was not belonging to Vietnam
and even our coastal region was not belong to Vietnamese people. But,
they did not do anything to stop Diem from merging our territories
into one Vietnam. Instead, the U.S. government aided Diem’s
government with millions of dollars to bring hundreds of thousands of
the Vietnamese refugees from the North to occupy our lands in the
P.M.S.I. in 1957. Later on, many of these refugees became Viet Cong
forces that fought against the American forces in South Vietnam and
murdered the innocent Degar peoples. To the point of view of the
Degar peoples, Diem planted Viet Cong in the P.M.S.I. for only one
reason. That is, to camouflage his program of genocide towards the
Degar peoples.
Ngo
Dinh Diem’s strategy of carrying out his genocidal program towards
Degar peoples.
When he
first took office as the president of the Republic of South Vietnam,
Diem radically abolished the Degar autonomy and annexed our
territories to Vietnam. He abolished our tribal courts, our land
rights, prohibited teaching our languages in school, burned all of
our educational books, confiscated all of our weapons that we used to
protect our selves from wild animals and so on. He forcefully took
our good farmlands and divided among the Vietnamese refugees from
North and pushed our peoples to the rocky lands. The Vietnamese
refugees that Diem settled in our lands began stealing our household
properties, our livestock, took our farmlands regardless of our crops
were ready for the harvest. When we reported to the government
officials about what the new refugees had done to us, they said that
we were the French influenced peoples. Then, they tortured us,
imprisoned us, and murdered us as we were killed by accident. He also
excused of security situation in order to move our peoples from our
ancestor land so that he could move the Vietnamese refugees in our
places. In order to be able to bombard and to destroy our villages,
he falsely accused us of following the Viet Cong. On the other hand,
the Viet Cong accused our people of being Diem’s followers and being
the ears and eyes of the US Armed Forces in order to kill them.
According to what had happened to our peoples and our homeland, we
feared that our race will be completely wiped out from the face of
this earth and our homeland will be lost forever. On behalf of the
Degar peoples, we the board directors of the Montagnard Foundation
would like to earnestly ask the community of the world especially the
United Nations Organization to protect us from being systematically
exterminated by the Vietnamese government. And, we also would like to
ask the peoples of the world who have heart to support us financially
and politically so that we can bring our just cause to the
international theater.
From
the bottom of our hearts, we would like to thank you in advance for
what you will be able to do to help us the Degar peoples in our
struggling for freedom.