Privacy Policy

What we collect, how testimony is kept apart, and what we will do if we are ever compelled to hand it over.

Some of the people who write to us can be imprisoned for doing it. That fact, and not a template, is what this policy is built around. We collect as little as we can, we keep testimony apart from everything else, we publish nothing that identifies a person without their consent, and if we are ever compelled to hand over records we will say publicly that we have been.

Nothing written here can make contacting us safe. Before you decide how to send us something, read reporting safely and decide whether to send it at all.

01Who we are

The Dega Central Highlands Organization (DCHO) runs this site. We document what happens to the indigenous peoples of the Central Highlands of Vietnam, we publish a library of that record, and we receive accounts and documents from families, congregations and the diaspora.

To reach us about anything on this page, use the routes described in reporting an incident.

02Two kinds of information, treated differently

We keep a hard line between the ordinary running of a website and the testimony people send us. They are not stored together and they are not handled the same way.

Ordinary site and account data

If you only readOur server records the usual request information — a page address, a timestamp, a browser type and an IP address — to keep the site working and to see which articles are read. We do not build profiles from it and we do not sell it.

An account or a ticketWhat you give us: a name, an email address, and what you write. That is what answering you requires.

A donationHandled by our payment provider. We never see or store your full card number. We receive that a donation was made, the amount, and whatever name and contact detail you chose to give.

Updates by emailYour address, until you unsubscribe. Every message carries an unsubscribe link, and it works.

Testimony, documents and reports

This is the part that matters.

We do not publish a name, a village, a photograph or any identifying detail without the consent of the person it belongs to.
If you ask us to hold something without publishing it, we hold it. That is not a courtesy; it is the arrangement.
If we cannot verify something, we do not publish it as fact. We say what we have and what we lack.
If a name is essential to an account but that person has not consented, we handle it as restricted and it does not appear.
An account can be recorded without a name at all. If that is what you want, say so and that is what happens.

03Who can see what you send

Testimony is seen by the smallest number of people who need to see it to act on it. It is not circulated inside the organisation for interest, not shared with other organisations without asking you first, and not handed to researchers or journalists without your consent.

Where we make a submission to a United Nations body, an embassy, a lawyer or a human rights organisation, we will tell you what we intend to submit and in what form, and we will not include anything identifying unless you have agreed to it.

04Legal demands, and what we will do about them

We are not going to pretend we are beyond the reach of a court. What we commit to is this:

If we are ever compelled to hand over records, we will say publicly that we have been, to the extent the law allows us to say it.

We will not hand over information about a person who has contacted us unless we are legally compelled, and we will resist a demand where there are grounds to resist it.
We will not voluntarily assist any government, including the Vietnamese government, in identifying a person who has written to us.

The practical protection is not a policy. It is that we hold as little as possible, for as short a time as possible.

05How long we keep things

Server logsA short rolling window, then discarded.

Account and ticket dataWhile the account is open, and a limited period afterwards for accounting and audit.

Donation recordsAs long as financial and charity reporting requires.

Email subscriptionsUntil you unsubscribe.

Testimony and documentsFor as long as the record is needed — this is a historical archive, and the purpose is that an account outlives the person who gave it. But you can ask us to delete yours at any time and we will, and we will confirm when it is done.

06Cookies

We use cookies to keep you signed in, to remember whether you chose the light or dark theme, and to record basic anonymous statistics about which articles are read. We do not run advertising trackers and we do not sell anything about you to anybody. Where the site asks for cookie consent, declining the optional ones does not stop you reading anything here.

07Other services we rely on

Running a site means relying on other people's infrastructure: a hosting provider, a payment provider for donations, and an email provider for messages and newsletters. Each sees only what it needs to do its job. We do not use services that build advertising profiles from our visitors.

08Your rights

Whatever jurisdiction you are in, you can ask us to:

tell you what we hold about you;
correct anything that is wrong;
delete what we hold, including testimony you gave us;
stop sending you messages;
stop processing your information while a question about it is resolved.

We will act on any of those without asking you why. If you are named in the prisoner records and you or your family want an entry corrected or removed, the same rule applies and we will not ask for a reason.

09Children

This site is not aimed at children and we do not knowingly collect information from them. Where an account of what happened to a child forms part of testimony, it is handled as restricted and nothing identifying is published.

10Changes to this policy

If we change anything here that affects how we handle what you have already sent us, we will say so on this page and date the change, rather than quietly replacing the text.

Read this first

If you are inside the Central Highlands, or have family there, the most useful pages before you contact anyone are reporting safely and how to document an incident. Our editorial practice — sourcing, corrections, and how we use other people's archives — is set out in sources and method.

Last reviewed September 2026.