Racism in Vietnam has been mainly directed by the majority and dominant ethnic
Vietnamese Kinh against ethnic minorities such as
Degar
Montagnard () is an umbrella term for the various indigenous peoples of the Central Highlands (Vietnam), Central Highlands of Vietnam. The French language, French term () signifies a mountain dweller, and is a carryover from the French Indochi ...
s (Montagnards),
Chams
The Cham (Cham: ''Čaṃ'') or Champa people (Cham: , ''Urang Campa''; vi, Người Chăm or ; km, ជនជាតិចាម, ) are an Austronesian ethnic group. From the 2nd century to 1832 the Cham populated Champa, a contiguous territo ...
and the
Khmer Krom
The ''Khmer Krom'' ( km, ជនជាតិខ្មែរក្រោម, , , lit. 'Lower Khmers' or 'Southern Khmers'; vi, người Khơ-me Crộm, người Khmer Nam Bộ, người Khmer Việt Nam, người Việt gốc Miên (used before 19 ...
.
History
Race issues and Khmer–Vietnamese racial violence during the First Indochina War
Historian Shawn McHale notes that despite the popular notion of the
First Indochina War
The First Indochina War (generally known as the Indochina War in France, and as the Anti-French Resistance War in Vietnam) began in French Indochina from 19 December 1946 to 20 July 1954 between France and Việt Minh (Democratic Republic of Vi ...
not being a war of race and
xenophobia
Xenophobia () is the fear or dislike of anything which is perceived as being foreign or strange. It is an expression of perceived conflict between an in-group and out-group and may manifest in suspicion by the one of the other's activities, a ...
told from the Vietnamese side, in reality many Vietnamese writers and intellectuals, which were heavily influenced by
social Darwinism
Social Darwinism refers to various theories and societal practices that purport to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics, and which were largely defined by scholars in We ...
before the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, had increasingly employed a lot of racist and ethnonationalist-themed contents and rumors during the war. They included racial antagonizing the popular images of black, Arab, Khmer, and indigenous peoples, and a civilization hierarchy based on skin color in the 1940–50s polyethnic Vietnam. For instance, nationalist propaganda leaflet in the Mekong Delta in 1951 claiming how the "barbaric French" were "dyeing" Vietnamese soldiers into
black Africans
Black is a racialized classification of people, usually a political and skin color-based category for specific populations with a mid to dark brown complexion. Not all people considered "black" have dark skin; in certain countries, often in s ...
and
Moroccans
Moroccans (, ) are the citizens and nationals of the Kingdom of Morocco. The country's population is predominantly composed of Arabs and Berbers (Amazigh). The term also applies more broadly to any people who are of Moroccan nationality, s ...
.
The period marked that unusual phenomenon happened in the very mainstream level of Vietnamese-language media, a vicious anti-black and xenophobic hatred. Those rhetorical expressions appeared widespread in popular slogans, newspapers, graphic imagery such as propaganda posters and cartoons, fallacious depicting the dark-skinned (also including the Khmer and indigenous peoples of South Vietnam) as savages, while emphasizing the Vietnamese struggles "to protect the Vietnamese race (''nồi giống'')" from replacement by blacks, Arabs, and ethnic minorities. The Vietnamese construct of race at the time was the one who shared "biological bloodline" or having the common
Vietnamese
Vietnamese may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia
** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam.
* Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam
** Overse ...
descent. The term ''đồng bào'' (compatriots) also accentuates the same meanings, were later extended to the Chinese in
Mekong Delta
The Mekong Delta ( vi, Đồng bằng Sông Cửu Long, lit=Nine Dragon River Delta or simply vi, Đồng Bằng Sông Mê Kông, lit=Mekong River Delta, label=none), also known as the Western Region ( vi, Miền Tây, links=no) or South-weste ...
who had often intermarried with the Vietnamese, but was never applied to peoples of
Cham
Cham or CHAM may refer to:
Ethnicities and languages
*Chams, people in Vietnam and Cambodia
**Cham language, the language of the Cham people
***Cham script
***Cham (Unicode block), a block of Unicode characters of the Cham script
*Cham Albanian ...
,
Malay
Malay may refer to:
Languages
* Malay language or Bahasa Melayu, a major Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore
** History of the Malay language, the Malay language from the 4th to the 14th century
** Indonesi ...
, and
Khmer ethnicities. The high percentages of Black Africans and Arabs in the French Expeditionary Corp were likely reasons for Vietnamese deep animosity toward blackness. Such intense antagonisms received little condemnation from the Viet Minh leaders who at the same time also realized that those Black and Arab soldiers were also victims of the French colonial empire.
For example,
Đào Duy Anh
Đào Duy Anh (25 April 1904 – 1 April 1988) was a Vietnamese historian and lexicographer. He was born in Thanh Oai, Hà Tây, now, Hà Nội. He was one of the writers associated with the Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm movement. He was the gener ...
once stated in the 1940s: "the culture of the American and European peoples is high, while the culture of the savage peoples ''(dân tộc mọi rợ)'' of Africa and Australia, just like that of the ''
Mường, Mán, Mọi'' in our country, is deficient." A ''Dân sinh'' newspaper published on January 14, 1946 triumphed "Now, no one would dare claim that the Vietnamese nation is a tribe of savages (''một bộ tộc mọi rợ''), since the Vietnamese people have exercised self-determination and self-rule through elections!" Hanoi journalist Phùng Tri Lai in 1950 vigorously characterized African minorities in terms of their so-called "nudity, barbaric habits, and custom of eating human flesh." When Catholic members in the Viet Minh resistance appealed to fellow Catholic in the
Mekong Delta
The Mekong Delta ( vi, Đồng bằng Sông Cửu Long, lit=Nine Dragon River Delta or simply vi, Đồng Bằng Sông Mê Kông, lit=Mekong River Delta, label=none), also known as the Western Region ( vi, Miền Tây, links=no) or South-weste ...
in 1949, they invoked the fear of racial extinction: "You cannot fold your arms and watch the enemy wipe out the race." On the opposite view,
Khmer Krom
The ''Khmer Krom'' ( km, ជនជាតិខ្មែរក្រោម, , , lit. 'Lower Khmers' or 'Southern Khmers'; vi, người Khơ-me Crộm, người Khmer Nam Bộ, người Khmer Việt Nam, người Việt gốc Miên (used before 19 ...
monk Trịnh Thới Cang in 1949 argued that, without education, Cambodian minority of Vietnam would be practically viewed no more than the Blacks of America in the perception of Vietnamese intellectuals. It was common during the war for ethnic minorities in Vietnam who were deemed "darker-skinned," were considered culturally inferior to the Vietnamese.
From even before the beginning of the war, Vietnamese ethnic violence and repressions conducted by various factions against the
Khmer Krom
The ''Khmer Krom'' ( km, ជនជាតិខ្មែរក្រោម, , , lit. 'Lower Khmers' or 'Southern Khmers'; vi, người Khơ-me Crộm, người Khmer Nam Bộ, người Khmer Việt Nam, người Việt gốc Miên (used before 19 ...
of the
Mekong Delta
The Mekong Delta ( vi, Đồng bằng Sông Cửu Long, lit=Nine Dragon River Delta or simply vi, Đồng Bằng Sông Mê Kông, lit=Mekong River Delta, label=none), also known as the Western Region ( vi, Miền Tây, links=no) or South-weste ...
had already accelerated.
Trần Văn Trà
Nguyễn Chấn, known as Trần Văn Trà (1918 – April 20, 1996) was a Vietnamese general. He was a commander in the Vietcong; a member of the Central Committee of the Lao Dong Party ( Workers' Party of Vietnam) from 1960 to 1982; a lieutena ...
in early 1946 admitted that the Party "used force to repress, and arrested hundreds of Khmer." These resulted in an outbreak of ethnic tensions, mass murders, chaotic pillaging of towns, and race riots committed from both Khmer and Viet populaces erupted and spread throughout the Delta from August 1945 to March 1946.
McHale concludes racial violence and race issues during the First Indochina War which often seen as marginal, outside the mainstream scholarship: "...,the First Indochina War was a race war. But it was not like World War II, in which Japanese propagandists spoke of a "
Yamato
was originally the area around today's Sakurai City in Nara Prefecture of Japan, which became Yamato Province and by extension a name for the whole of Japan.
Yamato is also the dynastic name of the ruling Imperial House of Japan.
Japanese his ...
race" fighting whites in a bitter global struggle, or Nazis defined Germans as a pure
Aryan
Aryan or Arya (, Indo-Iranian *''arya'') is a term originally used as an ethnocultural self-designation by Indo-Iranians in ancient times, in contrast to the nearby outsiders known as 'non-Aryan' (*''an-arya''). In Ancient India, the term ' ...
"race" fighting against racial others. Neither was it a Fanonian war pitting white colonialists against a darker foe. Rather, in the worst of times, Vietnamese sometimes perceived the war as a struggle for their own racial or ethnic survival against enemies, who ranged from French rapists and killers to Moroccan and
Senegal
Senegal,; Wolof: ''Senegaal''; Pulaar: 𞤅𞤫𞤲𞤫𞤺𞤢𞥄𞤤𞤭 (Senegaali); Arabic: السنغال ''As-Sinighal'') officially the Republic of Senegal,; Wolof: ''Réewum Senegaal''; Pulaar : 𞤈𞤫𞤲𞤣𞤢𞥄𞤲𞤣𞤭 ...
ese cannibals and on to Khmer Krom decapitators."
South Vietnam
Starting from 1955, the
South Vietnam
South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam ( vi, Việt Nam Cộng hòa), was a state in Southeast Asia that existed from 1955 to 1975, the period when the southern portion of Vietnam was a member of the Western Bloc during part of th ...
ese government of
Ngô Đình Diệm
Ngô Đình Diệm ( or ; ; 3 January 1901 – 2 November 1963) was a South Vietnamese politician. He was the final prime minister of the State of Vietnam (1954–1955), and then served as the first president of South Vietnam (Republic of ...
carried out an assimilation program against the indigenous peoples of the Central Highlands and the Cham, banning the teaching of Cham language in public schools in Cham areas, discriminating highland groups, while seizing indigenous lands for the Northern Kinh colonists. This resulted in increasing nationalist and independent sentiments among the Cham and the indigenous peoples. Some Cham joined the communist
NFL
The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the major ...
, some other joined FLC and FLHPC
Front de Libeùration des Hauts Plateaux du Champa (Liberation of Highlands and Champa). By 1964, civil right activists and independent organizations of the indigenous peoples, including Cham organizations, had been merged into
Front Unifieù de Lutte des Races Opprimeùes (FULRO), which fought against the governments of the Republic of Vietnam and succeeding
Socialist Republic of Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making it ...
until late 1980s.
Chams
The
Cham
Cham or CHAM may refer to:
Ethnicities and languages
*Chams, people in Vietnam and Cambodia
**Cham language, the language of the Cham people
***Cham script
***Cham (Unicode block), a block of Unicode characters of the Cham script
*Cham Albanian ...
in Vietnam are only recognized as a minority, and not as an indigenous people by the Vietnamese government despite being indigenous to central and southern Vietnam. Both Hindu and Muslim Chams have experienced religious and ethnic persecution and restrictions on their faith under the current Vietnamese government, with the Vietnamese state confiscating Cham property and forbidding Cham from observing their religious beliefs. Hindu temples were turned into tourist sites against the wishes of the Cham Hindus. In 2010 and 2013 several incidents occurred in Thành Tín and Phươc Nhơn villages where Cham were murdered by Vietnamese.
Highlanders
The Kinh Vietnamese dominated government media propagate negative stereotypes of the highlander ethnic minorities, labeling them as "ignorant", "illiterate", "backward" and claim that they are impoverished and underdeveloped because of their own lack of economic and agricultural skills. The ethnic Kinh settlers in the highlands have negative stereotypes and views of the highlanders with barely any intermarriage and little interaction since they deliberately choose to live in different villages with other ethnic Kinh. The Vietnamese government has promoted the ethnic Kinh migration to the highlands as bringing "development" to the highlanders.
Montagnards
Montagnards
Montagnard (''of the mountain'' or ''mountain dweller'') may refer to:
* Montagnard (French Revolution), members of The Mountain (''La Montagne''), a political group during the French Revolution (1790s)
** Montagnard (1848 revolution), members of t ...
are made up of many different tribes that are indigenous to the
Central Highlands of Vietnam. In the past, Montagnards were referred to as "mọi" (savages), by the Vietnamese.
Vietnamese textbooks used to describe Montagnards as people with long tails and excessive body hair.
Nowadays, the non-offensive term "người Thượng" (highlanders), is used instead.
In 1956, President
Ngo Dinh Diem
Ngô Đình Diệm ( or ; ; 3 January 1901 – 2 November 1963) was a South Vietnamese politician. He was the final prime minister of the State of Vietnam (1954–1955), and then served as the first president of South Vietnam (Republic of ...
launched programs to resettle
ethnic Kinh Vietnamese and northern ethnic minorities into the central highlands. These programs also sought to assimilate the Montagnards into mainstream Vietnamese society. This was the beginning of the struggle between ethnic Kinh and Montagnards. After the
Vietnam war
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
, the government further encouraged the ethnic Kinh to resettle in the highlands to cultivate coffee after the demand for coffee in the world boomed.
Approximately 1,000,000 ethnic Kinh were forcibly resettled to the central highlands.
This resettlement caused conflict between the ethnic Kinh and Montagnards because the Montagnards believed the ethnic Kinh were encroaching on their land. This conflict lead to resentment from the Montagnards which lead to some deadly protests against the ethnic Kinh.
Montagnards have faced religious persecution from the communist Vietnamese government since the end of the Vietnam war. The Vietnamese government has a list of government-approved religious organizations and requires that all religious groups register with the government. Any religious groups that are considered to be going against national interests are repressed and shut down. The Vietnamese government claim the independent Montagnard religious groups use religion to incite unrest. They use this to justify their capture, detainment, and interrogation of Montagnard political activists, leaders, and shut down of unregistered Montagnard churches. Followers of unregistered churches and religious activists have also been harassed, arrested, imprisoned, or placed under house arrest by authorities.
In 2001 and 2004, there were major protests from thousands of Montagnards. They protested against the repression and religious persecution from the Vietnamese government and demanded their land back. In 2001, there was a Montagnard independence movement facilitated by
MFI members. These protests lead to deaths and mass imprisonments.
Khmer Krom
See also
*
Anti-Vietnamese sentiment
Anti-Vietnamese sentiment ( vi, Chủ nghĩa bài Việt Nam) involves hostility or hatred that is directed towards Vietnamese people, or the state of Vietnam.
Background
Anti-Vietnamese sentiment, known on the lesser version as Vietnamophobia ...
*
Bụi đời
The Vietnamese term bụi đời ("life of dust" or "dusty life") refers to vagrants in the city or, ''trẻ bụi đời'' to street children or juvenile gangs. From 1989, following a song in the musical ''Miss Saigon'', "Bui-Doi" came to popular ...
References
Sources
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ethnic Issues Vietnam
Human rights abuses in Vietnam
Demographics of Vietnam
Vietnham
Vietnamese culture
Ethnic conflicts
Ethnic groups in Vietnam