08/08/2021
Dega Central Highland Organization
August 3, 2021
President Joe Biden
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington D.C. 20500
Dear. Honorable President Joe Biden,
First of all, I thank God Almighty for choosing you as the President of the United States of America. God chose a person who follows Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.
I am writing directly to you with questions about human rights issues, human trafficking and religious freedom. The Vietnamese government is completely against Dega Montagnards people living in the Central Highlands of Vietnam.
Many young Dega women have been human trafficked to Saudi Arabia in the past years and are not allowed to return home to their families. Dega Montagnards have been living in the Central Highlands since before Christ when no Vietnamese were there. We were living in freedom and peace and had no enemies. When the French Federation came to our lands, a few Vietnamese people cooked for the French officers .
Through the United Nations convention of 1954, the Vietnamese people stole our positions, and the Vietnamese people gave them to their people in South Vietnam. The French Federation forgot to take Dega Montagnard representatives there until after the United Nations conference when Ngo Dinh Diem became president in the south. We the Dega Montagnards people of the Central Highlands of Vietnam never elected him to be our president. Ngo Dinh diem brought millions of Vietnamese from the North to confiscate our land and to force Dega Montagnards to change their last names to Vietnamese last names. They forced us to assimilate with the Vietnamese, but we are a different people from the Vietnamese.
Ho Chi Minh and Ngo Dinh Diem had a meeting to start a war between them. We call this a civil war among the Vietnamese people. We Dega Montagnards in the Central Highlands did not understand where that war was coming from. Finally, the United States government became involved with the Vietnamese war from 1960-1973. The Vietnamese civil war was not just in the North or in the South but came to our homes, our villages and our farmlands. We are innocent people. Both sides of Vietnamese attacked and destroyed the Dega people. That war covered up Vietnamese war crimes against Dega humanity.
In the years 2001 and 2004 our Dega Montagnards Central Highland people stood up peacefully to demonstrate. The Vietnamese government responded with police troops and Army attacks killing many Dega people, but this was not reported, and no one cared about us.
The Vietnamese have never stopped the persecution and killing of the Dega/Montagnard people. Our farmlands have been taken away from us, our women have been forcibly sterilized, our men arrested and sent to prison for one to eighteen years. When released by the Vietnamese, they are sick and eventually die from their treatment, including chemical injections of poison to their bodies.
This is how the Vietnamese are committing genocide against the Dega/Montagnard people. We are also suffering religious persecution because of practicing Christianity. Many of our pastors have been arrested. Our ministry came from the U.S.A. to teach Dega people to know the Christian God and to worship him.
The Vietnamese government conducted a secret operation on July 16-18,2021 More than 300 Vietnamese police came to Buon Ea Khit village, Communie Ea Bhok, District Cu Kuin, Province of Dak Lak. The police kidnapped Pastor Y-Ken Buondap and others. My niece and nephew were beaten, as well as pregnant women. the police broke their necks. Cell phones and paperwork were taken from them and never returned. Many other Dega/Montagnard villages were also attacked. The Vietnamese government arrested over 20 people, including pastors and church members. Police ordered them to not worship God anymore, telling them that to do so is showing patriotism to America. The truth is, we worship God, not America.
President Joe Biden took action again Cuba because of their human rights violations. The Treasury Department will continue to designate and call out by name those who facilitate the Cuban regime's involvement in serious human rights abuse," said Director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, Andrea M. Gacki, in a press release on Friday. "Today's action serves to further hold accountable those responsible for suppressing the Cuban people's calls for freedom and respect for human rights. "
As part of the U.S. response, Biden said his administration was expanding assistance to political prisoners and exploring ways to bring internet to the island, as well as ways to increase the flow of remittances to the Cuban people without the military being able to take a cut. He also said there would be more sanctions in the coming days, "unless there's some drastic change" in the Cuban regime's behavior but added that he did not anticipate that happening. As part of the U.S. response,. Biden said his administration would widen support to do the same thing to the Vietnamese government in regard to economic sanctions, because the Vietnamese government has never respected human rights.
Let our Dega/Montagnard people be free! We have faced persecution and genocide for many years because the Vietnamese government has never respected human rights. They have no regard for human lives. Let our Dega/Montagnard people be free, because we have been oppressed for so long by the Vietnamese government's regime. We deserve freedom and peace. Please give us the self-determination we need to take care of ourselves and to determine our destiny.
Thank you and may God bless you,
Sincerely,
Y-Duen Buondap
Director
Dega Central Highlands Organization
980.320.6620
P.O. Box 668843
Charlotte, NC 28266
[email protected].
