KHMER KROM

The 'Khmer Krom' (Khmer: , Vietnamese: ''Khơ Me Crộm'') are the indigenous ethnic Khmer minority living in southern Vietnam, especially in the Mekong River delta. In Vietnamese, they are known as ''Khơ-me Crộm'' or ''Khơ-me dưới'', which literally means "Khmer from below" ("below" referring to the lower areas of the Mekong Delta).

Contents

Origins

History

Current Situation

External links

Origins

The Khmer Krom are ethnic Khmer who inhabited the delta of the Mekong long before the arrival of the Vietnamese.
According to Vietnamese government figures (1999 census), there are 527,174 Khmer Krom in Vietnam. However, this figure has been disputed as low.

History

Beginning in the early 17th century, colonization of the area by Vietnamese settlers gradually isolated the Khmer of the Mekong Delta from their brethren in Cambodia proper and resulted in their becoming a minority in the delta.
Prey Nokor was the most important commercial seaport to the Khmers. The city's name was changed by Vietnam to Saigon and then Ho Chi Minh City. The loss of the city prevented the Cambodians access to the sea. It began as a small fishing village known as Prey Nokor. The area that the city now occupies was originally swampland, and was inhabited by Khmer people for centuries before the arrival of the Vietnamese.
In 1623, King Chey Chettha II of Cambodia (1618-1628) allowed Vietnamese refugees fleeing the Trinh-Nguyen civil war in Vietnam to settle in the area of Prey Nokor, and to set up a custom house at Prey Nokor. Increasing waves of Vietnamese settlers, which the Cambodian kingdom, weakened because of war with Thailand, could not impede, slowly vietnamized the area. In time, Prey Nokor became known as Saigon.
In 1698, Nguyen Huu Canh, a Vietnamese noble, was sent by the Nguyen rulers of Huế to establish Vietnamese administrative structures in the area, thus detaching the area from Cambodia, which was not strong enough to intervene.
When independence was granted to French Indochina in 1954, the delta of the Mekong was included in the state of South Vietnam, despite protests from Cambodia. In the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge regime attacked Vietnam in an attempt to reconquer those areas of the delta still predominantly inhabited by Khmer Krom people, but this military adventure was a total disaster and precipitated the invasion of Cambodia by the Vietnamese army and subsequent downfall of the Khmer Rouge, with Vietnam occupying Cambodia.

Current Situation

Many independent NGOs report the human rights of the Khmer Krom are still being violated by the Vietnamese government. Khmer Krom are reportedly forced to adopt Vietnamese family names and Vietnamese language. {2} The education of Khmer Krom is neglected and they face many hardships in everyday life, such as difficult access to Vietnamese health services (recent epidemics of blindness affecting children have been reported in the predominantly Khmer Krom areas of the Mekong delta), difficulty in practicing their religion (Khmer Krom are Theravada Buddhists, like Cambodian and Thai people, but unlike Vietnamese who are Mahayana Buddhists or Roman Catholics), difficulty in finding jobs outside of the fields, and societal racism. The Khmer Krom are among the poorest segments of the population in southern Vietnam.
Unlike other minority people groups of Vietnam, the Khmer Krom are largely unknown in the western world, despite efforts by associations of exiled Khmer Krom such as the Khmer Kampuchea Krom Federation to publicize their issues with the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation. No western government has raised the matter of the Khmer Krom's human rights with the Vietnamese government.

External links

★ Khmers Kampuchea-Krom Federation (KKF)

★ Khmer Krom news and information network

★ Khmer Krom news and information in Khmer language

★ Khmer Krom: A Royal Solution for a Nationalist Vietnam reported by Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation

★ Video clips of Rebecca Sommer's film "Eliminated without Bleeding" documenting human rights violation claims of the Khmer Krom in Vietnam

★ March 2007- Article on religious oppression by Vietnam