Montagnard
At a U.S. embassy meeting on April 4, 1975 U.S. State Department officials promised to support the Montagnard tribes if they would wage guerrilla attacks in the NVA rear areas in the Central Highlands, critical for control of South Vietnam. A small army of approximately 10,000 Montagnards, primarily of the FULRO movement volunteered. Many were combat veterans with long tenures of USSF service. Large quantities of arms, ammunition, and radios were supplied and they began operations against the North Vietnamese Army (NVA).

From: http://www.montagnards.org/history.cfm

Or from: http://www.montagnard-foundation.org/homepage.html
MFI PRESS RELEASE
MONTAGNARD FOUNDATION, INC. — THE TRUE VOICE OF DEGAR PEOPLE

VIETNAM’S WAR ON CHRISTIAN HOUSE CHURCHES CONTINUES AS AUTHORITIES TARGETS PRISONER’S WIVES
Filed Under PRESS RELEASE |
BACKGROUND: The indigenous Degar Peoples (known under the French colonial term “Montagnard”) have suffered decades of persecution by the Vietnamese communist government, namely; confiscation of ancestral lands, Christian religious repression, torture, killings and imprisonment. An estimated 350 Degar prisoners remain in prison for standing up for human rights, for spreading Christianity or for fleeing to Cambodia. These prisoners are subjected to torture, including electric shock treatment, and withheld food and medical care. Many prisoners have been specifically beaten on their bodies repeatedly to deliberately cause them to die a slow death from internal injuries.

From: http://montagnard-foundation.org/Press/?p=25

For generations, the Montagnards have lived in the Highlands, unconcerned about the Vietnamese along the coast. The feeling was mutual because Vietnamese fishermen and rice-farmers had no reason to leave the lowlands. Traditionally separated, the two groups viewed one another with suspicion and, eventually, prejudice. But in 1954, South Vietnam's president, Ngo Dinh Diem, resettled approximately 200,000 ethnic Vietnamese lowlanders into land the Montagnards considered their own. he also attempted to blanket the Montagnards with Vietnamese culture. He eliminated tribal courts and disregarded Montagnard self-government and other institutions.

From: http://www.landscaper.net/montag.htm#Vietnam%20to%20Send

EDITORIAL
September 19, 2002
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The Montagnards
This Saturday, protesters will gather outside Vietnamese embassies in several cities around the globe, including Washington, to protest that government's human rights abuses, particularly with respect to the Montagnards.
Those indigenous, largely Christianized tribal people from Vietnam's central highlands were true friends of American soldiers during the Vietnam War, and they paid a terrible price. More than 50 percent of adult Montagnard males were killed alongside American soldiers during the Vietnam War.
The Montagnards have continued to suffer arrests, imprisonment, torture and religious persecution since the Americans left. Last April, Human Rights Watch released a 200-page report detailing the Vietnamese government's repressive activities. On one occasion, in March 2001, hundreds of troops entered the village of Plei Lao to break up an all-night prayer meeting. They stayed to shoot a villager and ransack the church.
The Vietnamese government's policy of forced sterilization of the Montagnards has been written about by Scott Johnson, a lawyer based in Perth, Australia and a human rights advocate for the Montagnard Foundation in South Carolina. That foundation has documented more than 1,000 cases of women who were forcibly sterilized. More shockingly, the Vietnamese government has admitted that it implemented such a policy.