Frequently asked

Are the Dega the same as the Montagnards?

Yes. Montagnard is the French name, Dega is ours, Degar is the same word spelled differently, and "Yard" is American army shorthand. They all mean the indigenous peoples of the Central Highlands of Vietnam — more than thirty tribes speaking languages from two families.

Isn't this a separatist movement?

We ask for the restoration of self-rule over a territory that a colonial power recognised in writing in 1946 and that a Vietnamese head of state described in 1951 as inhabited by "non-Vietnamese populations". Whether that is separatism depends on whether you think the highlands were Vietnam's to begin with. What is not in dispute is the method: since 1992 there has been no Dega armed movement, and the organisations Vietnam designates as terrorist are organisations that publish reports.

What about the attack in June 2023 — nine people were killed.

They were, and we do not defend it. Our position is set out in full in Cư Kuin, June 2023. Briefly: an attack that kills police officers and civilians at half past midnight is not made right by any history, and the collective response to it — a hundred people convicted in a single sitting, an advocacy group designated as terrorist, a refugee extradited from Thailand — is a separate wrong that the first does not license.

Is this really about religion, or is religion a cover?

Both questions assume the two can be separated. Most Dega are Christians; our churches are the last institution we run ourselves; the ban is on a form of Christianity defined by who practises it. You can call that religious persecution or political control and you will be describing the same village meeting.

Vietnam says its ethnic minority policy is generous — schools, clinics, poverty programmes. Is none of that real?

Some of it is real, and pretending otherwise would make us easy to dismiss. Roads and clinics have been built. What we say is that development is not consent, a school that forbids your language is not education in your own terms, and none of it addresses land, faith or standing. A people can be materially better off and still be being ended.

The measurable end of it: 31 per cent of ethnic minority children reach upper secondary school against 63 per cent of Kinh children, and none of our languages is a language of instruction. The schools.

Why do your population figures disagree with each other?

Because the sources disagree and we would rather show that than pick one. Our records give three to three and a half million under French rule; the anthropologist Gerald Hickey counted about a million in the 1960s. We publish both with attribution in How many Dega there are. An independent census of the highlands has never been permitted; when one is, we will accept its findings.

Can I visit the Central Highlands and see for myself?

You can visit. Whether you will see is another matter. The region was closed to almost all outsiders for eighteen years after 1975 and reopened in 1993; after April 2004 movement was restricted, meetings of more than two people banned, and contact with the outside world cut. Human Rights Watch has repeatedly asked Vietnam to admit independent observers. That request has not been granted, and it remains the single thing we most want.

What can I actually do?

Use our name. Ask your own government and any UN body you have access to for one specific thing: independent observers admitted to the Central Highlands. Read the sources at the foot of our articles rather than taking our word for it. If you hold a document, a photograph or a testimony, send it to us. And if you work in asylum law, the extradition of Y Quynh Bđăp from Thailand in November 2025 is a case that needs to not become a precedent.

If you are looking for somebody: the prisoner records, and the spellings you need to search them. If you are a lawyer, a researcher or a journalist: what we do not know is the fastest way to find something worth working on.

Why should anyone believe this library rather than the Vietnamese government?

Don't take either on trust. Every article here names its sources and links them, and we keep a page called what we do not know listing the figures we cannot confirm, the periods we have almost nothing on, and the places where our own sources contradict each other. A record that hides its weak points cannot be trusted with its strong ones. Check the citations; most of them are Human Rights Watch, OHCHR and the UN treaty bodies rather than us.

Do you want the Vietnamese farmers in the highlands removed?

No, and we never have. Most were moved there by state programmes, often against their own interests, and many are three generations in. Our claim is against the state and the policies, not the family on the next plot. What the Dega ask for sets out four things that could be done immediately, none of which requires anyone to lose a home or a border to move.

Isn't all this from the war? Why is it still going?

Because the land programmes did not stop in 1975. The Diem-era land development centres of 1956 and the New Economic Zones of 1976 differ in vocabulary and scale rather than in kind. The most recent entries in this library are from 2023, 2024 and 2025: nine people killed at Cu Kuin, around a hundred tried at a single sitting, 68 Montagnards detained in Thailand at a funeral service, and a UNHCR-recognised refugee extradited to Vietnam in November 2025.

FULRO fought alongside the Khmer Rouge. How do you defend that?

We don't. It is recorded in Mondulkiri, 1992 and in FULRO, including the fact that the Khmer Rouge had murdered our own leader. Men in a forest with no state, no ally and no information took what was offered to go on existing. A library meant to be used as evidence has to be able to say that plainly, or nothing else it says can be trusted.