337 Dega recorded by name as imprisoned for their faith, their land or their people, across five provinces, with arrests running from 2001 to 2006. This page explains what the records are, where they came from, what the gaps mean, and how to search them for somebody — including the spellings you have to try.
The five records
| Province | People | Arrests | Sentence recorded | Whereabouts unknown |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gia Lai | 233 | 2001–2006 | 63 | 62 |
| Dak Lak | 66 | 2001–2004 | 62 | — |
| Binh Phuoc | 14 | 2005 | 6 | — |
| Dak Nong | 13 | 2004–2006 | 7 | 2 |
| Kontum | 11 | 2004–2005 | 0 | — |
| Total | 337 | 2001–2006 | 138 | 64 |
Each record carries, where it is known: name, age at arrest, village, district, date of arrest, sentence, place of detention, and a note.
Where these came from, and what they are not
They are a community record, compiled from families, congregations and the diaspora, and inherited by DCHO from the Montagnard Foundation archive. They are not a court list, not a government list, and not a complete list.
Set them against the independently documented totals and the size of the gap is plain. Human Rights Watch recorded more than 350 Montagnards sentenced between 2001 and 2011, with at least 250 in prison or awaiting trial as of 2011, and at least 25 deaths in custody. These tables cover a narrower window and stop in 2006. They contain nothing on the roughly 100 people tried at the mobile court in January 2024 after Cu Kuin. So: 337 names is a floor, not a count.
What the blank columns mean
A blank sentence column does not mean no sentence. It means nobody outside was told of one. In Kontum not a single sentence is recorded against eleven arrests — which says something about access to that province and nothing about what happened to those eleven people. A blank is a measure of what the family could find out, and that is worth reading as evidence in its own right.
"Whereabouts unknown or feared dead" — 62 of the 233 in Gia Lai — is the harshest column. Behind each of those lines is a household that stopped receiving information and never started again.
How to search for somebody
Names in these records were written down by many hands, from several languages, over years. If a first search fails, the name is probably there under another spelling. Try all of these before concluding that somebody is not listed.
- Search the given name alone, without the prefix. Rhade and Jarai names carry Y‑ for men and H' for women, and the prefix is written variously as Y-, Y , Y joined to the name, H', H or Ho. Searching Not Eban finds Y- Not Eban, Y Not Eban and YNot Eban at once.
- Try the diacritics both ways. The same person appears as Byă and Bya, Đăp and Dap, Êñuôl, Enuol and Eñuol. Our records are inconsistent because the sources were.
- Try the village, not the name. If you know the village, search that. Village spellings vary too — Plei, PLei, Plếi, Buôn, Buon, Bon — so search the distinctive part of the name rather than the word for "village".
- Try the district. District names were re-spelled and in some cases re-drawn: Dakdoa / Đăk Đoa, Krong Pac / Krông Pắc, Chu Se / Chư Sê, Cu Se.
- Check both neighbouring provinces. Provincial boundaries changed — Dak Nong was separated from Dak Lak in 2004, which is inside the period these records cover. A person arrested in what is now Dak Nong may sit in the Dak Lak table.
- Read every table, not only the province you expect. People were detained away from home, and the province in a record is sometimes the province of detention rather than of residence.
The names and words page carries the full list of spelling variants.
If you find somebody
- Tell us what you know that the record does not say — a sentence, a transfer, a release, a death, a correction to a spelling or a date.
- Tell us if you are the family. We will not publish that you contacted us, and we will not add anything that identifies you.
- If the person is still held, an accurate entry — full name, date of arrest, charge, court, prison — is what a UN working group, an embassy or a lawyer needs before anything can be raised.
- Read reporting safely first, then how to report.
If somebody has just been taken
These tables are the long record. For the first hours and days, which is when the information that matters is easiest to lose, go to if a family member is detained.
Why we publish names at all
Because the alternative is worse. A person who is on a list that someone outside the country is keeping is harder to disappear than a person who is not. Every name here was given to us by a family or a congregation for that purpose. We do not add a name unless somebody asked us to, and we will remove one on request from the family without asking why.
Sources
- Montagnard Foundation, Inc., prisoner records (archive held by DCHO), compiled from family and congregation reports
- Human Rights Watch, Montagnard Christians in Vietnam (March 2011) — the independent totals these tables should be read against
Compiled September 2026. Every one of these records is incomplete and we would rather be corrected than left alone. Corrections are free and they are the most useful thing anyone reading this page can send us.