Knowledgebase

What Washington has said

The case in law Reference 14 views 3 min read Back

The United States recruited, armed and paid tens of thousands of Dega soldiers, and since 1986 has given many of their families a home. Congress has returned to the subject again and again: in hearings, in resolutions, and in reports by its own researchers. This page lists the record, so that anyone writing to their representative can cite what Congress has already said.

A flag carried at a gathering — Montagnard veterans and their families have lobbied Congress since the 1980s. Illustration.

Congress

Date	Document	What it says
10 Mar 1998	Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, The Plight of the Montagnards	Testimony on postwar persecution and on what the United States owes its former allies.
28 Jun 2001	H.Con.Res. 178 (107th Congress)	After the February 2001 protests: tanks and helicopter gunships used against demonstrators; about 250 refugees under UN protection in Cambodia; a report that Vietnamese security forces paid for the return of refugees.
6 Apr 2006	H.Con.Res. 320 (109th Congress), passed by the House	Restricted access to the Central Highlands and “well-founded concerns” about Montagnards forcibly returned from Cambodia; calls for UNHCR monitoring.
26 Mar 2014	Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission hearing	Statement by Rong Nay of the Montagnard Human Rights Organization: some 500,000 Montagnard Christians, more than 300 prisoners, and more than 200 people fled to Thailand.
1 Dec 2014	S.Res. 592 (113th Congress), Sen. Burr	Records that some 61,000 Montagnards fought alongside US forces, 43,000 of them in the CIDG, and condemns restrictions on religion, movement, land and property.
7 Jun 2018	House Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing, A Bad Year for Human Rights in Vietnam	Testimony including forced renunciations of faith by Montagnard Christians.
11 Jun 2019	H.Res. 435 (116th Congress)	“Up to 300 Montagnards” fled to Cambodia after October 2014 and only thirteen were recognized as refugees; urges that Vietnam be designated a Country of Particular Concern.
4 Oct 2023	S.Res. 395 (118th Congress), Sens. Tillis and Budd	Restates the 61,000 and 43,000 figures, notes that North Carolina has the largest Montagnard community outside Vietnam, and condemns continuing abuses.

Congress’s researchers

The Congressional Research Service has covered the Montagnards in its reports on US–Vietnam relations. In 2003 it called the February 2001 protests “the largest-scale social unrest in years” and recorded the US agreement to resettle more than 900 people from the Cambodian camps. In 2011 it estimated about a million Montagnards, many of them evangelical Protestants, and linked their loss of land to coffee and rubber.

The executive branch

State Department — publishes the annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices and the International Religious Freedom Report, both of which have Central Highlands sections. It designated Vietnam a Country of Particular Concern for religious freedom in September 2004, partly for the treatment of ethnic minority Protestants, and removed the designation in November 2006. In recent years it has placed Vietnam on its Special Watch List instead.
US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) — an independent federal commission that has repeatedly recommended that Vietnam be designated a Country of Particular Concern, and whose reports record forced renunciations and the arrests of Montagnard Protestants, most recently in its December 2025 Vietnam update.

Writing to your representative

If you live in the United States, the most useful thing you can do is write to your own Senators and Representative, citing the specific resolution above that is closest to your concern, and asking what they are doing about it. North Carolina’s delegation has the longest record on this; every state’s delegation has a vote.

Sources

Compiled September 2026. Some of the resolutions above were introduced and never voted on; they are listed because they record what members of Congress were told and what they chose to put their names to.

united states congress senate house of representatives resolutions hearings state department uscirf country of particular concern crs veterans 1998 2001 2006 2014 2019 2023

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