Siu Hiêm: a young man’s death in Plei Thoh Ga

Siu Hiêm told the people in the shop that the drink he had just been handed was poisoned. He died in front of them minutes later, on 2 June 2022. The officers who came, his family says, did nothing.

What happened

Siu Hiêm was born in 2003 in Plei Thoh Ga, a village in Phu Nhơn commune, Cứ Puh district, Gia Lai province. He worked for a Vietnamese employer.

On 2 June 2022 he was walking home from work when he stopped at a Vietnamese-owned shop and asked after the man who ran it. The owner handed him a canned drink. He drank it, and almost at once said that something in it was wrong.

I am going to die now. The man put poison in the drink he gave me.

He collapsed and began to vomit. No one there knew what to do for him, and he died in the shop within minutes.

The police were called and officers came. The people present say they examined nothing, asked no questions, and opened no inquiry. No investigation has been reported to us since.

What we are reporting, and what we are not

This account comes from Siu Hiêm’s family and from people who were in the shop with him. What they describe is what he said, what they saw, and what the officers did when they arrived. Whether the drink was poisoned, and by whose hand, is a question only an investigation could settle, and none has been made.

Why it matters

Siu Hiêm was Jarai, one of the peoples of the Montagnard Country of South Indochina. Families across the Central Highlands bring us accounts that end the same way his did: officers arrive, nothing is written down, and nobody is asked anything. A case nobody records is a case nobody answers, which is why we set down every one we can with a name, a date and a village.