Thirteen Dega from Dak Nong province, recorded by name as imprisoned for their faith, their land or their people, arrested between 2004 and 2006. For two of them the record ends in “family believes murdered.” Dak Nong barely existed as a province during these years, and its short record has to be read together with the Dak Lak one it was carved from. It is a record, not an argument. Every line is a person somebody is waiting for.
Dak Nong is the youngest of the highland provinces. It was created in 2004 from the southwestern districts of Dak Lak, in the middle of the years these records cover. That is why its own record is so short: for most of the period of arrests there was no Dak Nong, and the people taken from this land were recorded under Dak Lak. The entries here carry district names, such as Dak R’lap, Cu Jut and Dak Mil, that belonged to Dak Lak when the older arrests were made.
The record
| Name | Age | Village | District | Arrested | Sentence | Held at | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dieu Mblung | 40 | Bon Ja Lu | Dak R'lap | April 06, 2004 | Ha Nam | ||
| Dieu Minh | 29 | Bon Ol | Dak R'lap | April 04, 2004 | Ha Nam | ||
| Dieu Mloch | 31 | Buon Bu Mblanh | Dak Rlap | Dak Nong Province | faith | ||
| Dieu Wit | 32 | Bon Bu Mblanh | Dak Ra Lap | September 17, 2005 | Dak Nong Province | ||
| Dieu Xuoi | 30 | Bon Bu Dap | Dak Ra Lap | September 14, 2005 | Dak Nong Province | ||
| Y Ngu | 25 | Bon Bu Prong thon 10 | Dak Rlap | January 1, 2006 | |||
| Y- Mpi | 47 | Bon Sarpa | Dakmil | May 16, 2004 | 5 yrs | family believes murdered; whereabouts unknown | |
| Y- N'Krot | 45 | Bon Sarpa | Dakmil | May 16, 2004 | 3 yrs | family believes murdered | |
| Y-Duk Eban | 26 | Buon Nui | Cu Jut | April 10, 2004 | 10 yrs | Ha Nam | |
| Y-Het Bupah | 32 | Buon Jun Yuh | Dakmil | April 10, 2004 | 11 yrs | Ha Nam | |
| Y-Srun Butrang | 46 | Buon Jun Yuh | Dakmil | April 10, 2004 | 11 yrs | Ha Nam | |
| Y-Thomas Ya | 50 | Buon Budak | Dakmil | 8 yrs | Ha Nam | ||
| Y-Thot Butrang | 41 | Buon Jun Yuh | Dakmil | April 10, 2004 | 11 yrs | Ha Nam |
How to read this table
A blank cell means the information is not in our record, not that it does not exist. “Whereabouts unknown” means the family lost contact after the arrest. “Family believes murdered” is what the family told us, and it is recorded here in their words. Vietnam does not tell families what became of a person taken into custody, and has not for fifty years, so there is no official record to set against it and none to support it. If you have a burial place, a date, a prison transfer, or word from anyone held with them, tell us and we will add it to the line. “Land” and “faith” mark cases where the reason given for the arrest was a refusal to give up farmland or a refusal to leave an unregistered church.
What this record shows
A sentence is recorded for seven of the thirteen, running from three to eleven years. Two entries end in “family believes murdered” or “family believes murdered; whereabouts unknown” — the family’s account of a person who did not come back and whose fate the state has never disclosed. We record it as theirs and mark it so.
Because the province was split from Dak Lak inside this period, anyone searching for a person from Dak Nong should also read the Dak Lak record. The old district names in these entries are the surest way to place someone, since the province line moved under them.
Set against the other counts
Human Rights Watch noted the creation of Dak Nong out of Dak Lak in 2004 and documented at least 355 Central Highlanders imprisoned across the region since 2001, of whose trials fewer than half had been reported anywhere. A short list for a young province is not a sign that little happened here; it is a sign of how the map, and the record with it, was still being drawn.
Searching this list
Names here were written down by many hands, from several languages, over years, so a name you cannot find is usually present under another spelling. Search the distinctive part of a name rather than the whole of it: drop the Y or H that begins Rhade and Jarai names, try the clan name several ways (Rmah, R’mah, Romah; Rcom, Ro Cham; Rahlan, Ro Lan), and try the name a family used at home, the “father of” name that begins with Ama or Bă. The full method, and the reasons the spellings vary, are on the prisoner records page.
If you know one of these people
Tell us what the record does not say: a sentence, a transfer, a release, a death, or a correction to a name, a date or a village. If you are the family, we will not publish that you contacted us and we will not add anything that identifies you. If somebody has just been taken, the information that matters is easiest to lose in the first hours; go to If a family member is detained and read Reporting safely before you write anything down. To see how these Dak Nong names sit inside the whole record, and the other lists worth searching, read the prisoner records page.
Corrections and additions
These records were compiled over years from families and witnesses, under conditions where a mistake is easy and a correction is dangerous. If you find an error in a name, a date or a village, or if you know of someone missing from this list, please contact us. If a person named here has been released, has died, or has asked to be removed, tell us and we will act on it.
Sources
- The organization’s own prisoner records, compiled from family and congregation reports; the counts here are our tally of this table
- Human Rights Watch, Vietnam: Torture, Arrests of Montagnard Christians (January 2005) — the creation of Dak Nong out of Dak Lak in 2004; No Sanctuary (June 2006), in our library; Montagnard Christians in Vietnam (March 2011), in our library
- Amnesty International, Renewed concern for the Montagnard minority (April 2004) and Prisoners of Conscience in Viet Nam (2016)
Compiled September 2026 from the organization’s own records of arrests in the Central Highlands, set against the independent counts named in the sources. The underlying records date from the 2000s; treat every sentence as historical unless you can confirm it, and tell us what you can.