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 into the official record, 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 20, 1975, into the hands of the Khmer Rouge. The fighters he left in the forest waited for orders from him for seventeen more years.
Why we have given him a section of his own
Every other page in this library is about something that happened to all of us. This one is about one man, because the argument about what the Dega wanted, and how we asked for it, is settled by his life more cleanly than by anything else in the record. He wrote letters. He was imprisoned for the letters. He wrote more letters from prison. When he came out he was given a desk in the province he had petitioned about, and when that produced nothing he went to the forest with a movement in arms. He then spent ten years trying to trade those arms for a statute on paper, and was taken prisoner for the second time — by his own allies, at the moment he was about to sign.
The pages in this section set out what is documented, where the documents disagree, and what we still do not know. Much of the written record about him was made by people who were watching him rather than speaking with him: American intelligence officers, RAND researchers, army handbooks. We use them because they are dated and specific, and we say what they are — a spy service, a research contractor and an army, each studying a movement it meant to manage. They are not a better class of evidence than our own people’s accounts of him. They are the ones that got filed. If your family heard him speak, or holds a letter from him, that belongs on these pages too.
The man the watchers described
The CIA study of 1966 opens its account of him with a Rhade legend: that the bravest family of the Rhade was the family of Y Bham, and that he, “oldest male member of his family and thus by Rhade legend leader of the Highlanders,” called a meeting of the tribes in May 1957. Whatever one makes of the legend, the study is clear about what he wanted at that stage: “Y Bham, at this stage, apparently realized that the Highlanders needed hospitals, schools and technical assistance from the Vietnamese Government and sought this assistance from the Darlac Province Chief without success.” Of the two currents in the movement that followed, the study says, “the first, apparently headed by Y Bham, wanted to work with the Vietnamese Government in gaining equality for the Highlanders.”
The same watchers, describing the day of the revolt six years later, wrote that whether he went with the rebels willingly or under duress was not known, “but he apparently believed that his place was with the people and that possibly under his influence, he could avoid further bloodshed and at the same time gain advantages for the Highlanders.” The Vietnamese general commanding at Ban Me Thuot, the study adds, believed Y Dhon Adrong to be the real force in the rebel group rather than Y Bham. Hickey, writing for RAND in 1967, calls him “a Rhade who had spent five years in jail for his part in the protest of 1958.” Read together, they describe a man who was chosen by his people before he chose the movement, and who spent the rest of his life trying to bring it back to the table.
The seventeen years, in short
- 1913 — born at Buon Ale-A, the village beside Ban Me Thuot where the Protestant mission stood. He studied at the Franco-Rhade school, the mission Bible school and the national school of agriculture, and in the 1950s worked as a civil servant in the provincial agriculture service in Darlac and Pleiku.
- 1958 — led BAJARAKA. In July its emissaries carried a letter to the American, British and French ambassadors asking the United Nations for a fact-finding commission; on September 8 he signed the letter to President Diem as president of the committee; on October 12 the leaders petitioned for the release of the men already held. After the demonstrations of October 15 he was arrested with the whole central committee.
- February 10, 1964 — released by order of the Minister of the Interior, a year after he had been flown from his cell to a meeting with General Khanh at Pleiku. Appointed deputy chief of Darlac province for highlander affairs. He did not stay.
- September 20, 1964 — the FULRO revolt. He was at the radio station in Ban Me Thuot that morning; about noon, troops from Buon Sar Pa took him to the rebel headquarters south of the town. He led FULRO from Camp le Rolland in Mondulkiri for the next four years.
- 1965 to 1968 — talks with Saigon at Ban Me Thuot in 1965 and 1967, a set of demands that shrank each year, and a preliminary agreement in May 1967 that was never completed.
- December 1968 — the settlement was signed by his deputies on December 19. Just before he was to sign, his headquarters was seized and he was taken to Phnom Penh, where he was held under guard.
- April 20, 1975 — he left the French Embassy in Phnom Penh at the head of about 150 of his people. None of them was seen again.
- September 1992 — the last FULRO unit in Mondulkiri learned, from journalists and from a letter, that the president they were waiting for had been dead since 1975.
In this section
- The early years and BAJARAKA
- Buon Ale-A, the schools, the agriculture service, and the letters of 1958 that named what we had lost.
- The prison years, 1958 to 1964
- Dalat, Ban Me Thuot, the disputed sentence, and what he did from inside a cell.
- President of FULRO, 1964 to 1968
- The revolt he may not have known about, Camp le Rolland, and the rounds of negotiation.
- Phnom Penh: the captivity and the death, 1968 to 1975
- The seizure of his headquarters, six years under guard, the French Embassy, and what each source says about the end.
- What he actually asked for
- The grievances of 1958, the letters of 1964, the name and the history of 1965, the eight points, and the last signatures from Phnom Penh.
- The photographs of him
- Seven pictures from our own archive. What each one shows, where it comes from, and what we cannot confirm.
What his life is evidence of
Y Bham Enuol is the answer to the claim that the Dega chose violence. He tried the letter, the petition, the demonstration and the treaty, in that order, over seventeen years, and was imprisoned for the first, ignored for the second, arrested for the third and detained by his own side for the fourth. The armed movement was not his preference. It was what remained.
Anybody arguing today that highlanders should put their case through proper channels is describing a life that has already been lived, and should know how it ended.
Further in this library
The movement he led is set out on FULRO, 1964–1992, the movement that preceded it on BAJARAKA, 1958, and the men around him on The men of FULRO. The two who tried the other route, inside the government, are on Paul Nur and Nay Luett. The unit that waited for him is on Mondulkiri, 1992.
Sources
- Human Rights Watch, Repression of Montagnards (2002), the historical chapter and its notes — the birth year, the schools, the arrests, the house arrest and the death, drawing on Gerald Hickey’s Free in the Forest (1982)
- CIA, The Highlanders of South Vietnam: A Review of Political Developments and Forces (June 1966), DCHO library, also on the Internet Archive — the fullest contemporary account of 1957 to 1966, and the words quoted above
- Gerald C. Hickey, The Highland People of South Vietnam: Social and Economic Development, RAND RM-5281 (1967), DCHO library, and Accommodation and Coalition in South Vietnam, RAND P-4213 (1970), DCHO library
- François Ponchaud, Cambodia: Year Zero (1978) — the eyewitness account of April 20, 1975
- “Montagnard Army Seeks U.N. Help,” Phnom Penh Post, September 12, 1992 and Nate Thayer, “Lighting the darkness: FULRO’s jungle Christians” (1992, reposted 2013)
- Our own records — the dating of the portrait
Compiled September 2026 from the sources named on each page in this section. Where sources disagree we say so rather than choose.