Abstract
After the 1975 reunification, Vietnam has experienced a trend of ethnic conflicts in its Central Highlands and Mekong Delta, where ethnic minorities are struggling to preserve their traditions and claim political interests. This chapter exposes the major drivers causing the decades-long ethnic tension in Vietnam in the face of globalization forces. It first traces the development of Khmer Krom anti-Vietnamese government movement through which incompatibilities are identified. Given that globalization impacts and economic development may lead to increased political expectations among ethnic minority groups, the chapter analyses in what ways the current globalizing economy in Vietnam has bred and facilitated the resurgence of Khmer Krom ethnic tension in the Mekong Delta, especially when it has been fuelled by anti-Vietnamese sentiment in Cambodia and manipulated by ultranationalist activists, called Khmers Kampuchea-Krom Federation (KKF), and Cambodian opposition party leaders. The chapter then identifies and examines the Vietnamese approach to addressing ethnic tension. Three interlinked components constituting the country’s ethnic conflict management include (1) population resettlement and rural development programmes, (2) a propaganda machinery with an ethnic relations strategy, and (3) pre-emptive measures. The strong influence of Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh’s Thoughts in the Vietnamese ethnic policy is also discussed in this part. Since the Khmer Krom’s major claim to political autonomy remains unsettled, the chapter concludes that even though the Mekong Delta has witnessed some relative stability and improvement in Khmer Krom ethnic rights, it pays for the government of Vietnam to show greater liberal democracy and inter-ethnic equity.
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- 1.
The early Chinese immigrants played a key role in reclaiming virgin land in the Mekong Delta during the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries. As “masters” in trading, they were dominant in Vietnamese commerce and business and established many “flourished kingdoms” around the Delta, such as My Tho (1670s) and Ha Tien (1700s). These independent “kingdoms” were initially ruled by Chinese exile generals who later switched allegiance to Nguyễn lords and merged their lands with Vietnamese territory in the 1800s (Kim 1971; Lam et al. 2006).
- 2.
While no one denies the positive role of Vietnamese troops in liberating the Cambodians from the genocidal regime of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, one of the great challenges in Cambodia-Vietnam bilateral relations is the perception of many Cambodian people who even long before the 1979 Vietnamese invasion saw Vietnam as a long-term threat to the Cambodian land. Less verifiable stories and historic narratives about Vietnam’s land grabbing ideology have been taught in Cambodian schools and passed down from generation to generation (The Phnom Penh Post 1996; Kimkong and Sovinda 2017) . Thus, the 10-year presence of Vietnamese military forces in Cambodia has eventually resulted in reviving a chronic anti-Vietnamese sentiment among the Cambodians.
- 3.
Many of them have turned into violent riots, injuring many Vietnamese Cambodians (Le Coz 2014).
- 4.
This categorization is based on the UCPD definition which can be reached at http://www.pcr.uu.se/research/ucdp/definitions/
- 5.
See KKF-facilitated activities which are widely published at http://www.ned.org/where-we-work/asia/vietnam and https://www.facebook.com/KhmerKromNews
- 6.
Local governance comprises a set of institutions, mechanisms and processes through which citizens and their groups can articulate their interests and needs, mediate their differences and exercise their rights and obligations at the local level (UNDP 2004).
- 7.
It is obvious that the good governance at the local level requires a considerable degree of decentralization, without which the space in which the stated interaction among the stakeholders remain limited.
- 8.
Vietnamese Penal Code (Articles 78–91). Visit at http://moj.gov.vn/vbpq/en/Lists/Vn%20bn%20php%20lut/View_Detail.aspx?ItemID=610
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Oishi, M., Quang, N.M., Van Minh, N. (2020). The Transformation of Ethnic Conflict in Vietnam: The Case of the Khmer Krom in the Mekong Delta. In: Oishi, M. (eds) Managing Conflicts in a Globalizing ASEAN. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9570-4_4
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