Socialist Republic of Vietnam

LAM DONG — A four-day trip to the Tay Nguyen (Central Highlands) this week seemed to please Spanish tour leader Aznar Fernandes Fernando who, when asked for his opinion of the trip, said: "very good, very enjoyable."

Aznar took a group of fellow Spaniards to the remote province of Gia Lai from April 15 to 18, an area where some Western news organisations had reported "unrest" and "suppression of ethnic minority people" a week earlier.

But Aznar, 45, described the area as "dramatically peaceful and highly secure."

"I was impressed by the beauty of the area and we were welcomed very warmly by the local people."

Aznar’s group visited the Dray Sap waterfalls and the Ethnology Museum. Aznar said he particularly enjoyed riding the elephants around the village of Buon Don and sailing the one-man boats on the calm Lak lake.

Two other foreign groups were touring the area at the same time as Aznar, one from the US and one from Germany.

These groups agreed the area was a great destination and were particularly complimentary about the bright sunny weather.

Before leaving the Highlands, the tourists went to the Nam Thien church in Buon Ma Thuot’s suburban village of Hoa Thuan, which was crowded with over 1,000 worshippers, mostly from the Ba Na group.

The tourists spoke to locals through an interpreter. A couple from the Kim family, whose home is opposite the church, told them the Nam Thien diocese was one of the largest in the Central Highlands, with more than 8,000 Christians – half from the Kinh majority and the other half from the Ba Na ethnic minority.

The couple said the groups all got along well and had led peaceful lives for decades.

Leaving Buon Ma Thuot City, our car travelled 200km along a road lined with lush rubber, coffee and pepper farms to A Dok commune, Dac Doa District in Gia Lai province, where there had been reports of demonstrations on April 10-11.

But the community was peaceful the day we visited. The dirt tracks leading to the commune’s eight villages were teeming with slogans and posters welcoming the April 25 People’s Council elections. At polling stations, many ethnic Kinh, Ba Na and Gia Rai people were studying the list of candidates.

"Some extremists groups conspired to inspire unrest on April 10," the chairman of A Dok People’s Committee, Bo Duoi, said.

"But after listening to explanations , these protests dissolved of their own accord. The reason for their actions was incitement by people who bear us ill will."

Duoi said the groups that incited the disturbance had told local people that anyone who joined the demonstrations at the commune’s headquarters would get free rice, money, roofing for their houses, medical check-ups and overseas air tickets.

"Those who didn’t take part would receive nothing and would be beaten and have their houses torched."

Extremists like K Ric from Ji Rong village and Vu, Nguon, Dum and Dat from Bi A Ty village, have recanted, Duoi said.

"We were wrong to have committed these bad actions recently. We promise that we won’t let ourselves be incited or be taken in by bad influences and will not make the same mistakes again," the protesters said in a joint statement after their arrest.

Bla, an elder from Bi A Ty village, said: "The fact that the Government has invested so much money in building infrastructure such as power stations, roads, schools and health clinics for the village has been ignored by these extremists.

"Some of our children were too native to understand fully the nature of words of the people who incited the trouble.

We have the responsibility of educating our young people and keeping them away from bad influences in order to maintain the peace in the village."

In the nearby border district of Duc Co in Gia Lai province, local authorities were preoccupied with preparations for the election of People’s Councils. Commune People’s Committees in the district were full of voters checking if their names had been registered correctly.

"Villages in the commune have held many meetings between candidates and voters over the last week," said Ro Ma Klum, chairman of the Ia Dot Commune’s War Veterans Association.

"We are aiming for a 100 per cent voter turnout on April 25." — VNS