Rights for the Mountain Men

Far deeper than the North-South Cabinet split was the wound that Premier Ky sought to heal last week at Pleiku. There, on the edge of Viet Nam's serrated central plateau, he sat down with leaders of the rebellious Montagnard tribes, whose demands for equal treatment have plagued every Saigon government since 1954.

The problem of the mountain men has been centuries in the making. Primitive aborigines who wear loincloths and worship ghosts, they are descended from natives who occupied the Indo-Chinese peninsula long before the Chinese-related Vietnamese moved south some 1,700 years ago. The Vietnamese took over the rice-rich coastal plains and the Mekong Valley, pushing the aborigines into the rugged, jungle-thick mountains to the northwest.

Into the Hills. French colonial policy kept the highland Montagnards and lowland Vietnamese apart. Tribal courts were allowed to judge Montagnard morals and property disputes, while Paris encouraged the teaching of tribal languages--and French--in the highland schools. Montagnard troops fought in separate units under French officers, just as the Gurkhas and Rajputs did in Britain's Indian army.

Trouble between Saigon and the highlands began in 1954, when President Ngo Dinh Diem's regime attempted to "assimilate" the million-odd Montagnards. Tribal schools and courts were abolished, and 200,000 Vietnamese moved into the hills--often violating tribal tenure rights to grab rich land along the highlands' racing rivers. In Darlac, a Vietnamese province chief decreed that Montagnards must wear shirts and slacks; in Pleiku, Montagnards were forbidden to build their houses on stilts. By 1958, the tribesmen were completely dispossessed: Diem denied them title to their lands.

Arms or Acquiescence. That gave rise to Fulro, a Montagnard nationalist underground movement meaning "United Front for the Liberation of the Oppressed Races." In September 1964, Fulro rebels captured five Special Forces camps in the highlands and along the Cambodian border, killed 50 Vietnamese troops, and seized the radio station at Ban Me Thuot--a highland town of 30,000 that serves as the Montagnard capital. Premier Nguyen Khanh tried to calm the Montagnards with enlightened promises of a bill of minority rights, but political instability in the capital made implementation of the new policy impossible. The Viet Cong also made a play for Fulro, but were as unsuccessful as Saigon in winning either the Montagnards' arms or their acquiescence. All through 1965, Fulro's 3,000-odd irregulars fought on both sides of the Viet Nam war: they killed dozens of Viet Cong and (in two Montagnard mutinies) 32 South Vietnamese.

Early this year, Saigon resumed negotiations with the Montagnards, and last week Premier Ky flew to Pleiku with the bill of rights that they had long sought. Already, he had met one of Fulro's demands by setting up a special commission for Montagnard affairs, named a Montagnard to head it. He promised to return tribal lands to Montagnard control, create a special Montagnard pennant to be flown alongside the national flag, and set up an elite highland military force under Montagnard command. Nine Montagnard representatives now sit in Saigon's Constitutional Assembly, and tribal languages are again being taught in highland schools. More than 500 scholarships have been granted to Montagnards; two students left last week for studies in the U.S.

During a three-hour ceremony at Pleiku, Ky sat impassively in his black uniform and lavender scarf, removing his gloves only to put on the brass bracelets that symbolize Montagnard friendship. Solemnly, 250 Montagnard rebels knelt before him to pledge allegiance to the Saigon government. Then, as Ky, a host of government officials, and U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge looked queasily on, the Montagnards poured rice wine over the Premier's boots and slashed a water buffalo to death in honor of the Saigon visitors. Fortunately, the sacrifice took only five minutes rather than the usual hour or more. Both lowlanders and highlanders seem to have learned something about cross-cultural sensibilities.

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