Knowledgebase

The Dega flags

Records and how to use us Reference 19 views 4 min read Back

There is no single Dega flag. There have been several, each belonging to a movement or an organization, and each carrying the history of the people who made it. This page shows the ones we can document, says where each comes from, and marks what we do not know.

BAJARAKA, 1958

A flag divided by a black cross, green above and red below, with a disc quartered in red, yellow, white and green at the center — The BAJARAKA flag, as drawn on Wikimedia Commons. Drawing: Kim-Long07, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

BAJARAKA took its name from four peoples — Bahnar, Jarai, Rade and Kaho — and its flag, used from 1958 to 1964, carries a disc divided into four, one quarter for each. The Flags of the World project records that some older sources wrongly attributed this flag to the Cham; it is a highland flag. Descriptions of the field differ between sources, and we have not seen an original.

The Front for the Liberation of the Highlands, 1964

A flag with a green hoist bearing a white crescent and star, blue and white stripes, and a red fly — The flag of the Front de Libération des Hauts Plateaux (FLHP), as drawn on Wikimedia Commons, which records it as used by FULRO from 1964. Drawing: Phanlinhhn, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

In 1964 BAJARAKA’s successors organized as the Front for the Liberation of the Highlands, and in September that year they joined Cham and Khmer Krom fronts to form FULRO. This flag belongs to that moment. The United Montagnard People flag described below repeats its arrangement of an emblem at the hoist, stripes, and a plain red fly.

FULRO

A flag of three horizontal bands, blue, red and green, with three white stars on the red band — The flag most associated with FULRO: blue, red and green, with three white stars. Wikimedia Commons dates it from 1968 to 1992. Drawing: Huyme, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

The usual reading is that the blue stands for the sea, the red for the struggle and the green for the mountains, and that the three stars are the three peoples, or the three fronts, that made up FULRO: highlanders, Cham and Khmer Krom. Flags of the World records that the blue was later changed to black. This is the flag carried in the forest after 1975 and handed over, with the last weapons, in 1992 (see Mondulkiri, 1992).

The diaspora flags, 1986–87

A flag of green, white and red bands with an elephant in a gold ring on a white disc — The flag of the Montagnard Dega Association of North Carolina, created in 1987. Drawing: Marko de Haeck, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

The best-known flag in the diaspora was made in North Carolina in 1987 for the Dega people in North Carolina. As recorded by Flags of the World and the Montagnard Support Group:

green for the mountains and forests;
white for peace and honesty;
red for blood and struggle;
the elephant for gentleness and strength;
the ring for the brass friendship bracelet that highlanders gave to American soldiers they trusted.

A flag almost identical to the previous one, with the gold ring open at the bottom — A version drawn on Wikimedia Commons for Save the Montagnard People and dated there 1986; Flags of the World says the organization uses the MDA flag. The ring is drawn open, as a bracelet is. Drawing: Marko de Haeck, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

According to Flags of the World, the 1987 design was modeled on an earlier flag of the South Vietnamese era, that of the Movement for the Unity of Ethnic Groups of South Viet-Nam, which also used an elephant’s head and a ring, on green, yellow and red stripes.

Other flags

United Montagnard People: a blue hoist with a large white star, green and white stripes, and a red fly. Flags of the World notes that it is increasingly used as a general Dega symbol.
United Montagnard Republic: seven stripes, green, white, red, white, red, white, green, with a blue canton bearing a thin yellow cross, reflecting the conversion of many highlanders to Protestant Christianity.

A flag divided diagonally, green below and red above, with a white diagonal band and an emblem in a white disc — A flag labeled “Flag of Degar Montagnards” on Wikimedia Commons. We have not been able to establish who designed it or when. Drawing: 8742hhh and MrMisterer, via Wikimedia Commons, CC0.

What we have not claimed

People in the highlands have been prosecuted for owning or displaying these flags. We do not assert any report here. If you have such a record, please send it to us safely.

See also: The bracelet.

Sources

Flags of the World, “Montagnards (Viet Nam)”
Montagnard Support Group, “Dega flags”
Wikipedia, “United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races” and “1964 FLHP rebellion”
The Wikimedia Commons file pages linked under each image

Compiled September 2026. Flags drawn on Wikimedia Commons are reconstructions. If you have an original flag, or a photograph of one in use, we would be glad to record it.

flag flags symbols bajaraka flhp fulro montagnard dega association save the montagnard people elephant bracelet vexillology 1958 1964 1986 1987

How to document an incident A report that a human rights body can act on looks different from a report that something terrible happened. This is what makes the difference, and why. Read Reporting safely first. Tutorial 31 views Read More Frequently asked The questions we are actually asked — including the hostile ones, which we would rather answer than leave to be answered for us. FAQ 26 views Read More If a family member is detained What to write down and what to try, in the first hours and the weeks after. We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice; it is what families who have been through it have told us mattered. Checklist 33 views Read More Names and words Reading about the Dega means reading four vocabularies at once — ours, the French, the Americans' and the Vietnamese state's — and they do not agree. This is what the words mean here. Glossary 44 views Read More The prisoner records: what they are and how to search them 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. Reference 41 views Read More Y Bham Enuol A Rhade official from Buon Ale-A who led both of our movements, spent more than five years in the prisons of the government he was petitioning, put our own name for ourselves before an international conference, was held under guard by his own allies for the last six years of his life, and walked out of the French Embassy in Phnom Penh on April 2... Spotlight 46 views Read More