April 12 (Bloomberg) -- Vietnamese security forces fought
``extremists'' in two provinces in the central part of the
country, the government said after reports of protests in the
area that resulted in violence.
On Saturday, the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi told its citizens in
the Southeast Asian nation not to travel to Dak Lak province in
the country's Central Highlands after receiving ``credible
reports of violent protests'' in Buon Ma Thuot, capital of Dak
Lak. The embassy today extended the notice to Gia Lai province,
north of Dak Lak.
In 2001, ethnic unrest in Dak Lak and Gia Lai caused
Vietnam's government to take action against Protestant ethnic
minorities, according to the U.S. State Department. Many of the
minorities were protesting because of the loss of traditional
homelands to recent migrants, mostly ethnic Vietnamese from
elsewhere, said a 2003 U.S. report on religious freedom.
``Over the past few days, some extremist elements in several
localities in Dak Lak and Gia Lai provinces, with instigation
from outside, have carried out activities of causing public
disorder,'' said Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung in
a statement.
``They even fought against authorities, damaging public
welfare works and assets in some communes,'' Dung said. ``Local
authorities have taken measures to stabilize the situation.''
The U.S. Embassy said its consulate-general in Ho Chi Minh
City had ``heard reports of police roadblocks preventing travel
into the area, and that Vietnam Airlines will not board
foreigners on flights to the Central Highlands.''
Technical Reasons
No passengers have been prohibited from traveling to the
Central Highlands, said Vietnam Airlines spokesman Nguyen Tan
Chan. Recent flights operated to the region have been full while
other flights have been canceled for technical reasons, he said.
U.S. diplomats who were traveling by car from Ho Chi Minh
City to the Central Highlands over the weekend on a previously
scheduled trip to the region were stopped by authorities in Binh
Phuoc province, southwest of Dak Lak, ``and told to turn around''
according to Raymond Burghardt, the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam.
``I've asked people in the Foreign Ministry if they could
find out what happened there,'' Burghardt told journalists today
in Hanoi. ``I will also ask when we can send people to the area,
because it's obviously best to have people visit the area in
order to find out what's going on and not have to rely on
rumors.''
Suspicion
Ethnic minority Protestants in Vietnam's Central Highlands
who follow a type of evangelical Christianity combining cultural
pride and aspirations for control over ancestral lands are viewed
with suspicion and have faced persecution by the government, the
U.S.-based group Human Rights Watch said last year.
``We regularly like to send people into those areas,'' said
Burghardt. ``It would be useful from Vietnam's point of view to
have people from our embassy and maybe from some other embassies
go in to get an accurate picture.''
Hundreds of asylum seekers from ethnic minority communities
in the Central Highlands, collectively known as Montagnards,
crossed into Cambodia after the 2001 unrest, according to a
report released last year by Amnesty International.
More than 70 Montagnards have been sentenced to prison in
Vietnam for taking part in protests or trying to flee to Cambodia
since February 2001, Human Rights Watch said last year.
Vietnam's government ``vehemently rejects all ill-willed
slanderous and distortive rhetoric on so-called `ethnic and
religious persecution' in Vietnam,'' the Foreign Ministry's Dung
said today.
Jail Terms
Last May, Vietnamese authorities sentenced 15 people in the
region to jail terms for ``inciting locals to create social
disorder and instability,'' the Vietnam News reported at the
time. The accused were found to have distributed prohibited
documents and to have ``prepared logistics for long-term
rioting,'' the newspaper said.
Sam Brownback, a Republican from Kansas who chairs the U.S.
Senate's East Asian and Pacific Affairs Subcommittee, visited
Vietnam this year to assess religious freedom in the country
after receiving ``numerous reports of religious persecution,''
according to a statement by Brownback released during his visit.
``I continue to have concerns about religious liberty in
Vietnam,'' he said in the January statement.