On April 12, as an accredited member of the delegation of the Transnational Radical Party (TRP) to the 58th session of the UN Commission on Human Rights, Mr. Kok Ksor, President of the Montagnard Foundation Inc. delivered a speech before the plenary under item 15 addressing indigenous issues in Vietnman's central highlands. The day after the presentation, the TRP hosted a briefing at the UN with the screening of a video on the history of Vietnam's indigenous people also known as the Montagnards

In his intervention Mr. Ksor - who is a member of the TRP and addressed its 38th congress last April in Geneva - denounced the persecution that the Montagnards have to suffer as well as the living condition which hundreds of refugees are experiencing in the Camps in neighboring Cambodia. At the outset of Mr. Ksor's address, Viet Nam took the floor accusing him of being the head of a terrorist network, which threatens the security of the State and asked the bureau to stop his statement. Cuba sustained that request. Only the exemplary behavior of the Commission Chairman, Polish Ambassador Krzysztof Jakubowski, secured the legality of the proceedings allowing the TRP to finish its speech.

In days that followed TRP's intervention the Delegation of Vietnam and the Chair of the Commission exchanged letters on the event.

On May 15, the Vietnamese Government, in the person of its Permanent Representative to the United Nations, H. E. Ambassador Nguyen Thanh Chau, presented a formal complaint to the Committee on NGOs against the Transnational Radical Party regarding the accreditation of Mr. Kok Ksor to the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva last April.

In the letter, the Vietnamese Government accuses Mr. Kok Ksor, currently a U.S. citizen and former member of the FURLO, of being a terrorist recruited by CIA, who undermines the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Viet Nam

Apart from the communist propaganda of Hanoi's regime, it is important to reaffirm that, in all his statements before the United Nations, Mr. Kok Ksor has always denounced the systematic violations of the most fundamental human rights of the Montagnard and of the breaches of the most important international treaties on human, civil and political rights perpetrated by the Vietnamese Government, violations that are resulting in a creeping and growing annihilation of the indigenous people who live in Vietnam's Central Highlands. It also need to noted that Mr. Kok Ksor, in his capacity as President of the Montagnard Foundation Inc. has also participated in several meetings of the working groups on indigenous issues and in the preparatory sessions of the permanent forum on indigenous people.

On 17 May 2002, at the outset of the afternoon session of the Committee on non-governmental organizations, the Permanent Representative of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam to the United Nations formally lodged a complaint before the Committee requesting a "special report" on the Transnational Radical Party. The delegations of China, Cuba, the Sudan, Algeria, the Russian Federation, and Pakistan expressed their support for the Vietnamese request. The document will have to address both the accreditation of Mr. Kok Ksor and it is due at the Committee resumed session in January 2003.

The TRP will also appear before the Committee on NGOs next week for a consideration of some questions posed by the delegation of the Russian Federation on its quadrennial report concerning its 1995-99 UN-related activities.

Over the last 16 months, after the pacific demonstrations of February 2001, during which the Montagnards protested against religious oppression and land confiscations -proletariat expropriations which have made the Montagnard one of the poorest people in the world- Hanoi's authorities have imposed a regime of martial law on Viet Nam's Central Highlands closing the region to any type of monitoring by international institutions and independent experts.

The imposition of martial laws together with the closure of the region are the premise for the complete extermination of the Montagnards, and the agreement signed by Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos to strengthen surveillace along shared borders violates the Geneva convention on refugees, who are asking the international community to stop this shameful persecution in a country party to international human rights treaties.

On 16 May, Mr. Gianfranco Dell'Alba, MEP, and member of the Transnational Radical Party tabled a parliamentary question to the European Commission on the situation of the Montagnards in Vietnam's central Highlands.

In June 2001, Mr. Olivier Dupuis, MEP, former Secretary General of the TRP was arbitrarily arrested for having tried to accompany the Patriarch of the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam, Thich Quang Do in a religious walk towards the North of the country.