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Vietnam Minorities
Living somewhat separately from the dominant ethnic
Vietnamese are the numerous minorities. The 1979 census listed
fifty-three minorities accounting for 12.7 percent (6.6 million
persons) of the national population. This figure included the Hoa
(Han Chinese), the single largest bloc--representing
approximately 1.5 percent of the total population, or about
935,000 people--in the lowland urban centers of both the North
and the South. Of the other minority groups, thirty, comprising
68 percent of the minority population (4.5 million persons),
resided in the North, while the remaining twenty-two groups,
comprising 32 percent of the minority population (2.1 million
persons) lived in the South. The size of each community ranged
from fewer than 1,000 to as many as 0.9 million persons, and 10
major groups comprised about 85 percent of the minority
population
(see table 3, Appendix A).
Minorities that live in the mountainous regions are known by
their generic name, Montagnards. The Vietnamese also
disparagingly call them "moi," meaning savage. The government
attributes the backwardness of the Montagnards to the
overwhelming influence of their history as exploited and
oppressed peoples. They are darker skinned than their lowland
neighbors.
The origins of the non-Vietnamese minorities are far from
clear, but scholars generally believe that some, like the Hmong
(Meo), Zao, Nung, San Chay, Cao Lan, Giay, and Lolo, are
descendants of the ancient migrants from southern China who
settled in the northern border regions. Others, like the Tay,
Muong, and Thai are believed to be related to the lowland natives
of Malay stock who were forced into the highlands by successive
invasions of Mongoloid peoples from China. Among these indigenous
minorities are the Cham of central Vietnam, remnants of a kingdom
that ruled the central coast of the country until overrun by the
Vietnamese in the fifteenth century, and the Khmer, whose
Cambodian forebears controlled the Mekong delta region until
displaced in the late eighteenth century by the Vietnamese
(see Nine Centuries of Independence
, ch. 1). The Khmer and the Cham
are lowlanders of the south and are considered, along with the
Tay, Muong, and Thai of the north, to be culturally more
developed than other minority ethnic groups but less so than the
Vietnamese.
The non-Chinese minority peoples, however, are for the most
part highlanders who live in relative independence and follow
their own traditional customs and culture. They are classified as
either sedentary or nomadic. The sedentary groups, the more
numerous of the two kinds, are engaged mainly in the cultivation
of wet rice and industrial crops; the nomadic groups, in slash-
and-burn farming where forested land is cleared for a brief
period of cultivation and then abandoned. Both groups inhabit the
same four major areas: the northern Chinese border region and the
uplands adjacent to the Red River Delta, the northwestern border
region adjoining Laos and China, the Central Highlands and the
area along the Giai Truong Son, and parts of the Mekong River
Delta and the central coastal strip. These groups are notable for
their diverse cultural characteristics. They are distinguished
from one another not only by language but also by such other
cultural features as architectural styles, colors and shapes of
dress and personal ornaments, shapes of agricultural implements,
religious practices, and systems of social organization.
The number and variety of languages used by Vietnam's
minorities reflect the country's ethnic complexity. Minority
groups are distinguished by more than a dozen distinct languages
and numerous dialects; the origins and distribution of many of
these languages have not yet been conclusively established. They
can, however, be classified loosely into three major language
families, which in turn can be divided into several subgroups.
Eleven of the minority groups--Tay, Thai, Nung, Hmong, Muong,
Cham, Khmer, Kohor, Ede, Bahnar, and Jarai--have their own
writing systems.
Religious practices among highland minorities tend to be
rooted in animistic beliefs. Most worship a pantheon of spirits,
but a large number are Catholics or Protestants. In contrast to
the Mahayana Buddhist beliefs of the majority of Vietnamese, the
Khmer practice Theravada (or Hinayana) Buddhism, and the Cham
subscribe to both Islam and Hindu beliefs
(see Religion
, this
ch.).
Before the arrival of the French in the nineteenth century,
the highland minorities lived in isolation from the lowland
population. Upon the consolidation of French rule, however,
contacts between the two groups increased. The French, interested
in the uplands for plantation agriculture, permitted the
highlanders their linguistic and cultural autonomy, and
administered their areas separately from the rest of Vietnam.
Conferring this special status gave the French a free hand in
cultivating the largely unexploited highlands, where their
administrators and Christian missionaries also set up schools,
hospitals, and leprosariums.
Often, however, conflicts arose between the upland
communities and the French, who were distrusted as exploitative,
unwelcome interlopers. The French, however, eventually overcame
the unrest and successfully developed some of the highland areas,
especially those of the Ede and Jarai, where they established
large rubber, coffee, and tea plantations.
After the mid-1950s, North and South Vietnam dealt with the
minorities differently. The Hanoi regime in the North,
recognizing the traditional separatist attitudes of the tribal
minorities, initiated a policy of accommodation by setting up two
autonomous zones for the highlanders in return for their
acceptance of Hanoi's political control. By offering limited
self-government, Hanoi's leaders hoped that integration of the
minorities into Vietnamese society could eventually be achieved.
By contrast, the noncommunist Saigon administration in the South,
under Ngo Dinh Diem, opted for direct, centralized control of the
tribal minorities and incurred their enduring wrath by seizing
ancestral tribal lands for the resettlement of displaced Catholic
refugees from the North.
After Diem's death in 1963, successive Saigon administrations
granted a modicum of autonomy, but the strategic hamlet program,
introduced in the South in the 1960s, caused further disruption
by forcing highlanders to relocate to fortified enclaves. The
program was proposed to improve the physical security of
montagnards as well as to deny food and services to
Viet Cong (see Glossary) guerrillas, but it largely
embittered its minority
participants, who wanted to be left alone to continue living on
their ancestral lands in the traditional manner. In an act of
resistance, some tribal leaders gathered in 1964 to announce the
formation of the Unified Front for the Struggle of Oppressed
Races (Front Unifie pour la Lutte des Races Opprimees--FULRO),
representing the Bahnar, Cham, Ede, Hre, Jarai, Mnong, Raglai,
Sadang, Stieng, and other groups.
After 1975 a number of northern minority cadres were sent to
the Central Highlands to lay the groundwork for socio-economic
development. In 1977 a university was set up at Buon Me Thuot,
capital of the Dac Lac Province, to train a corps of minority
cadres. These tactics were designed to narrow the socioeconomic
gap not only between the highlanders and the lowlanders but also
among the minorities themselves.
In the mid-1980s, the party and media expressed satisfaction
with the cadres' training and commended certain highland
provinces for progress in agricultural cooperativization, noting
that a growing number of slash-and-burn farmers had turned to
sedentary farming and that further improvements in cultural and
health facilities were planned. By 1986 about 43 percent of the
estimated 2.2 million nomadic minority members were reported to
have adopted a more sedentary life. There were also glowing
claims that minorities were now full-fledged participants in
national affairs, as was evidenced by their representation in the
National Assembly (see Glossary) and in other government and
party organizations.
A cursory examination reveals, however, that progress was
spotty. The living conditions of highlanders continued to lag
behind those of lowlanders. In remote areas, "backward customs
and practices" remained unchanged, minority groups were
insufficiently represented among cadres, and sorely needed
resources for material improvements were lacking. Official claims
that closer unity and greater harmony were being achieved in a
multinational Vietnam were belied by the government's frequent
admonishments against "narrow nationalism" (the parochialism of
the minority groups) and against "big nationality prejudices"
(the ingrained Vietnamese biases against minorities). To be sure,
the number of minority cadres with either general or college-
level education was growing, but in 1987 these cadres represented
only a small portion of the functionaries serving in the highland
provinces, districts, towns, and villages. In Dac Lac Province,
91 percent of the district-level cadres and 63 percent of the key
village and lower level cadres had been transferred from other
places, presumably from the North or the lowlands of the South.
Under the government program of population redistribution,
lowlanders continued to emigrate to the Central Highlands. In
1980 about 52 percent of the Central Highlands population
consisted of ethnic Vietnamese. In 1985, as pressure mounted on
the Vietnamese government to produce grain and industrial crops,
a greater influx of ethnic Vietnamese was anticipated. By 1987 it
seemed clear that minority groups were likely to remain unequal
partners in the management of their local affairs, despite
official protestations to the contrary, as increasing numbers of
Vietnamese settled in the Central Highlands.
The minority question remained an issue because of its
implications not only for integration but also for internal
security. In the mid-1980s, there were occasional official
allusions to counterrevolutionary activities attributed to FULRO.
Hanoi was quick to assert, however, that these rebel activities
were blown out of proportion by the Western media
(see Internal Security
, ch. 5). Nonetheless, the authorities were concerned
about the northern border areas, where renegades of such groups
as the Hmong, Zao, and Giay were said to have participated in
China's anti-Vietnamese activities after 1979 as "special gangs
of bandits." Official literature supported the construction of "a
border cultural defense line to counter the multifaceted war of
sabotage waged by the Chinese expansionists."
Data as of December 1987
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