The red menace

In an opinion piece on Oped News, a former defense industry consultant raises the “red flag” on continuing human rights violations by the Vietnamese government. While the piece focuses mainly on the suppression of the Hmong in Laos, it also touches on the Montagnards and Khmer Krom, two groups acutely connected to Cambodia.

The Montagnard Foundation reports that they hold evidence that bounty hunters capture the Montagnard refugees in Cambodia, and sell them back to the Vietnamese for $20 to $100.

Twenty dollars is a month’s pay for a policeman in this part of the world.

“Why does the mainstream media ignore the plight of the Montagnards, the Khmer Krom, and their cousins, the Hmong in Laos for over 30 years, and still continue to do so?” asked Chue Chou Tchang, from the Special Guerrilla Units (SGU) Veterans. SGU Veterans is a U.S.- based Hmong human rights organization organization.

The answer, unfortunately, is this: nobody cares. The history of the world is rife with paranoid, murderous regimes. Virtually none of them have ever been dealt with while it still mattered. And as heartbreaking as it may be, the status quo seems unlikely to take a turn for the better now.