'For me the most challenging part has been knowing what to do with the political situation that these men are a part of," says Pastor Laurie. "I've seen within the ranks of the Montagnards a division between those who plan to go back to Vietnam and change it, and those who are saying, 'We have to cut our losses and start over and do the best to bring our families here.' "
The first 200 Montagnards to arrive in 1986 were part of an armed resistance group called FULRO, a French acronym for Unified Front for the Resistance of Oppressed Peoples. Organized in 1975, FULRO's members lived in the jungles of Vietnam and took up arms against the communist government for ten years. One of the leaders of this revolutionary faction was Rong Nay, a soft-spoken man who now lives in a quiet suburb of Durham and runs the Montagnard Human Rights Organization. Kok Ksor, who arrived in the United States in 1976 before the rest of his community, heads another organization, The Montagnard Foundation.
Rong Nay's group focuses on bringing Montagnards out of Vietnam and to the States. Kok Ksor's group works to bring freedom to the people who are still in the highlands. Though the two organizations are working toward the same goal--the end of oppression of their people in Vietnam--their supporters in North Carolina are very much divided.
"Some of the people are following Kok Ksor, and some are following Rong Nay," Laurie says. "That creates a wedge among churches here because some of their guys are going one way and some are going another. It creates a wedge within the community. It creates concern in my heart. Am I fostering a revolution, a rebellion? And how dare I tell people of another culture--especially an oppressed culture--'Don't take up arms. Don't be soldiers. Don't kill people for your freedom,' when that's what brought my freedom. It's easy to be a pacifist when you're sitting pretty. It makes me wonder what my faith has to say to this issue. Are we supposed to fight for our freedom?"
Lap, Ksor, Dar, and Loa are passionate supporters of Kok Ksor. They regularly attend his large meetings in Charlotte and Greensboro, the two other cities in the area with substantial Montagnard communities. On September 21, 2002, exactly three months after they arrived in North Carolina, Lap, Dar, and Ksor nervously attended a demonstration outside the Vietnamese embassy in Washington, D.C. Kok Ksor organized the event to call international attention to the human rights violations being committed against his countrymen, and thirteen busloads of Montagnards from North Carolina attended the demonstration. Lap keeps a home video of the event. At the time, when he decided to go to Washington, he didn't tell his sponsors he was leaving town.
"Close to the day we went to Washington," Lap explains, "Jack [a sponsor] said, 'Who wants to go to Washington?' We can't tell him because we know if he knows somebody wants to see Kok Ksor in Washington, Jack will take them and go the other way to Greensboro." Like other sponsors, Jack Penalver has become involved in the political schism between the two community leaders. When Jack discovered that some of the men he sponsored went to the demonstration, he drove to Washington. Lap's video zooms in on the tall, agitated man in a white dress shirt and tie confronting Kok Ksor in the crowd of demonstrators about his negative influence over the men and women who came from North Carolina. Seen as a disruption to the nonviolent demonstration, Jack was eventually asked to leave by the police.
Rong Nay believes that he and Kok Ksor want, in essence, the same thing. Speaking softly from a swivel chair in the comfortable basement where he runs his human rights organization, he quietly recites the complex story of FULRO resistance. He wants Westerners to understand. Rong Nay says that even though there are three different organizations working in North Carolina--his Montagnard Human Rights Organization, the Montagnard Foundation, and the Montagnard-Dega Association--they have the same goal in mind. "I compare my life right now," he says, "with our people back in Vietnam. I am happy. I have a house. I have a car. My children go to school. I do what I want here. Nobody stops [me] unless I do something violent, a crime."
He produces a two-page list of Montangards he knows to be in prisons in Vietnam. "In Vietnam, the Montagnards are not free yet. They can't do anything. Their voice is silent. We stand for them. So I try to bring all of them [to the United States]. I believe I will win. We came to this country. It looked like a good opportunity, but we have to think back on the Montagnards in the central highlands, and how much they need our voice. We come to this country with pain, with suffering, and with aspirations for our people. That is my dream and my vision. I will never stop until my last breath."
Fostering a revolution?