Seventeen years of demands, as they were written down at the time. Read in order they show a case that never changed in substance and got smaller every year in what it asked for: a commission of inquiry in 1958, a country in 1964, a statute in 1965, eight points in 1967, a political party and a flag in 1968.
1958: the grievances
The petition his delegation carried to the American, British and French embassies in July 1958 asked the Secretary-General of the United Nations for a commission to investigate conditions in the highlands. Forty-five highland leaders signed it. The grievances it listed, as the CIA study summarized them, were these:
- The semi-autonomous status of the French period had been ended without consulting us.
- Highlanders had almost no representation and were treated as second-class citizens.
- Vietnamese settlers were being put on tribal land without compensation.
- Schools and health care were poor.
- Vietnamese farm colonies competed with us unfairly.
- Soldiers stole from villages and were not punished.
- Highlanders were paid late, and less, for their labor.
- A welfare budget of three million piasters had been misused.
- The officials sent to govern us knew neither our languages nor our customs.
Every one of those nine complaints is still in our submissions today, in the same order of importance. That is not a rhetorical flourish; compare them with What the Dega ask for and with the land law.
The letter to President Diem of September 8, 1958 set out the demand for autonomy and was signed by him as president of the committee. The petition of October 12 asked for the release of the men already arrested, and carried about a thousand signatures.
1964: the letters from the border
From hiding, in the months after the September revolt, he wrote a series of letters that American intelligence logged and summarized. They are the high-water mark of what he asked for.
The condition in that last line is the whole of the man. He was preparing an offensive and waiting for permission to launch it.
1965: the name, and the history
In a letter of August 9, 1965 he wrote in the name of the “Free Country of DEGA.” On November 1, 1965 he wrote a short history, Extraits de l’Histoire des Hauts-Plateaux du Centre Viet Nam, Pays Montagnards du Sud — “Extracts from the history of the Central Highlands of Vietnam, country of the southern mountain people.” Hickey, who used it, describes it as the fullest statement of the historical case as our leaders then understood it. We have not been able to read a copy, and would like to: if you hold one, please tell us.
By September 1965, after the talks at Ban Me Thuot broke down, the demands he sent had dropped autonomy and were economic and administrative. American reporting at the time counted eight of them, then five.
1966: the larger list
In November 1966 he put a wider set of demands to Saigon: a separate administration, a separate army and police, separate schools and courts, and Montagnard representation at international conferences. American officers called them far-reaching, and nothing came of them.
1967: the eight points
The Montagnard Human Rights Organization gives the eight points he put formally to the Saigon government on May 4, 1967:
- A special statute, with a constitution of our own.
- A Montagnard capital at Ban Me Thuot, with a Montagnard commission sitting there.
- Our own armed forces.
- The return of Montagnard civil servants and soldiers to the highlands.
- Aid from the United States and other countries received directly, not through Saigon.
- Our flag flown at the same height as the flag of the Republic of Vietnam.
- The boundaries of the highlands marked.
- A Montagnard place at any new Geneva conference.
Days earlier, at Ban Me Thuot, he had reached a preliminary agreement with General Vinh Loc and had sworn to cease all acts against the national interest; the American embassy reported it to Washington on May 3. The questions of a separate army and of direct aid — two of the eight — were put off, and were never answered. The Statut Particulier that Saigon decreed on August 29, 1967 was made without him, though the Americans tried to bring him into it.
1968: what was actually signed
The settlement of December 1968, signed by his deputies while he was being taken to Phnom Penh, allowed the highlanders to form their own political party and to fly their own flag, and created a ministry for highland affairs. In exchange he had given up the earlier demands, including aid received directly from foreign governments. Of the eight points of 1967, two were granted in a form: the flag, and a voice in the administration.
1973 and 1974: the last signatures
From the house in Phnom Penh he was still issuing authority. The Montagnard Human Rights Organization dates to October 20, 1973 his naming of Kpa Koi as vice-president of the movement. In July 1974 the American embassy in Saigon reported a document in Rhade with a French translation, signed by him, appointing Kpa Koi to head FULRO; Nay Luett confirmed the signature was his. An academic account of Kok Ksor’s life says he made Kok Ksor chief of staff in the same year.
What we have not been able to find
- The text of the FULRO declaration of September 1964.
- The text of his address to the Conference of Indochinese Peoples, March 1965.
- A copy of Extraits de l’Histoire des Hauts-Plateaux du Centre Viet Nam.
- Any letter from him to an American president, though several accounts say he wrote to Washington.
- Any interview with him in the international press between 1969 and 1975.
Sources
- CIA, The Highlanders of South Vietnam: A Review of Political Developments and Forces (June 1966) — the 1958 grievances and petitions, the 1964 letters, the 1965 and 1966 demands
- US Embassy Saigon to the State Department, May 3, 1967, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, vol. V, doc. 158 — the preliminary agreement of May 1967
- Montagnard Human Rights Organization, history page — the eight points of May 4, 1967, and the appointment of October 20, 1973
- Gerald C. Hickey, The Highland People of South Vietnam: Social and Economic Development, RAND RM-5281 (1967) — the 1965 history and its place in the case
- Human Rights Watch, Repression of Montagnards (2002), the historical chapter — the terms of the December 1968 agreement
- US Embassy Saigon, weekly report, July 24, 1974 (State Department cable 1974-144543) — the signed authority carried by Kpa Koi in 1974
- Joe P. Dunn, “Kok Ksor and the Struggle for Cultural Survival,” Athens Journal of History (2024) — Kok Ksor as chief of staff, 1974
Compiled September 2026. Where a document has not been read by us, the page says so.