If you are reading this, chances are you have a variety of childhood memories, hopefully more pleasant than not. But if you ask East Charlotte resident Mle Ksor what her childhood memories are, she will give you a one word answer: war.
Mle is a 46 year-old refugee from the Central Highlands of Vietnam. And while she is from Vietnam, she is not Vietnamese. She is a member of a people group known as the Montagnards.
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| Mle Ksor, center, with her sons (l-r) Thai and Them, outside of their apartment home in East Charlotte. |
The term Montagnards was coined by the French to refer to a diverse group of tribes found in Vietnam’s Central Highlands. It means “mountain dwellers” and was first used when Vietnam was a French colony. Mle is a member of the Jarai tribe, the largest of the tribal groups.
The Central Highlands played a critical role in the Vietnam War and was the scene of some of the most intense battles of the conflict. Mle’s childhood was spent dodging bombs and moving with her family from place to place to avoid warfare.
Shortly after the United States withdrew from Vietnam in 1975, Mle was married. Like many Montagnards at the time, she married at a very young age, only 11 years old. She had her first child the following year when she was 12.
Any thoughts of her life improving because the war was over quickly came to an end when the victorious North Vietnamese Communists took control of the country. The Montagnards had sided with the American soldiers during the war. Thousands had fought, and thousands had died, alongside US Special Forces. In addition, many of the Montagnards were Christians, having been evangelized by French and American missionaries throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Any form of religious expression was frowned upon by the atheistic communists, but Christianity was especially despised because of its association with the United States.
All of this was further compounded by historic ethnic tensions between the Vietnamese and the various tribes who lived in the Central Highlands. So Montagnards were now viewed with suspicion and hostility by those in power, who began cracking down on the mountain dwellers as well as any expression of their Christian faith.
The Communists began to move ethnic Vietnamese into the Highlands, displacing the Montagnards from their native lands. Authorities began to raid Christian house church meetings, burning the believers’ Bibles. This had a direct impact on Mle, who had become a Christian in 1973. In 1976, the year their child was born, Mle’s husband was taken into the jungle and killed. Mle was remarried to her deceased husband’s brother, an arrangement that is not unusual in the culture of the Central Highlands.
Two years later, in 1978, Mle was arrested and taken to prison where she was held in stocks for four days. During that time, her two-year old child was with her, and they were both held without food or water. Afterwards, she was subjected to a month of forced labor.
Mle was allowed to return home where she continued to follow Christ, although always under the watchful eyes of the Communist authorities. During this time, her husband was arrested, in 1989, while the family was returning from a worship service at a neighboring farm. He died in 1992 of natural causes, leaving Mle alone with their five children. The Vietnamese continued their persecution, arresting Mle once again in 1996 and forcing her to perform another month of labor. When she returned to her village she found that the Communists had taken her land and were using it as the site of a new military barracks.
Mle’s experience was not unusual. Throughout the Highlands, other Montagnards were arrested, tortured, beaten, and forced to “swear brotherhood” with the Communist Party. They were pressured to denounce their Christian faith and forced to sign documents saying that they had voluntarily given up their land to the government.
In the face of all of this, the Montagnards suffered quietly throughout the 1990’s. This changed during the first decade of the 21st century. Widespread political protests rocked many villages in the Central Highlands. This brought a harsh crackdown from the authorities. The number of arrests dramatically increased. Any kind of travel, even to draw water, required official permission. Travel at night or by oneself was strictly forbidden.
Mle was arrested two more times, in 2005 and 2006. Each time she was held for a month and forced to clean the human refuse out of the prison. Upon coming home from her 2006 imprisonment, she knew something had to change.
Ever since the Communist crackdown had started, several thousand Montagnards had managed to escape the country by fleeing into Cambodia and entering United Nations refugee camps. Once there, it was possible to be relocated to America. But the trip was dangerous. Not only would they have to evade the watchful eyes of the government, but, once in the jungle, there would be no clear direction and no certainty that their physical needs would be met along the way.
But Mle was willing to take a chance. So on November, 11, 2006, she and her three sons and two daughters fled into the jungle. The authorities soon realized that they were missing and sent troops to find them.
Mle recalled the experience: “We had no plan and we had no food. The Communists sent four trucks of soldiers to look for us. They had dogs to help them find us. But we prayed and God protected us! We were hiding behind a very large tree, and they were on the other side with their dogs, searching. But they did not see us. The dogs did not even smell us!”
However, while hiding from the authorities, Mle’s oldest son and her daughter became separated from the rest of the family and returned to the village. But Mle and her two younger sons were determined. They continued their trek. For the next five weeks, they moved west through the jungle toward Cambodia.
The family faced numerous challenges along the way. There was no food, and were it not for small unripe bananas that the sons climbed the trees to retrieve, they would have starved. The youngest son, named Them, became very ill during their journey. The Cambodian border region was particularly perilous. Vietnamese officials had offered a bounty for the capture of fleeing refugees, and many border police took them up on the offer, returning those seeking exile to the authorities. By the middle of December, they were very discouraged.
But then on December 20, a Cambodian Christian named Don Kpuih was scouring the jungle, looking for unusual things that could be turned into crafts and sold for money. On this day, she found something she hadn’t planned on: Mle and her sons! Don took them to a safe hiding place in the jungle, fed them, and contacted the local United Nations authorities. On December 22, nearly six weeks after they had fled Vietnam, Mle and her sons were transported to the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh where she was taken to a United Nations refugee camp.
For the next year and a half, Mle and her sons lived at the camp. While conditions were not ideal by any stretch of the imagination, life was, as Mle said, “better than the jungle!” And the knowledge that they would now have an opportunity to go to the United States made the situation more than bearable.
On May 27, 2008, Mle’s greatest hopes were realized as she and her sons flew into Charlotte’s Douglas International Airport. North Carolina has been the traditional state for Montagnard relocation because of the proximity of many of the Special Forces troops that they had fought with during the Vietnam War. Mle chose Charlotte because of a cousin who already lived here.
Because the UN had designated her as a refugee, Mle and her sons have come to the United States as legal immigrants and are able to hold a job and apply for government benefits. The federal government and a number of non-profit organizations also provide resources that have helped with the costs surrounding their relocation, such as housing, food and living expenses.
Since arriving, Mle has found a job at Carolina Foods, a local wholesale sweet goods bakery. She also attends school to learn English at Central Piedmont Community College. Although it is challenging (“English is a very hard language to learn,” she said), she continues to work at it. She finds that learning the language is very important, especially since it helps her do her job better.
Both of her sons have adjusted to life in the United States. Her older son, named Thai, is 21 years old. He has a job with Tree Brand Packaging Company during the day and studies to learn English at night at CPCC. Her younger son, Them, is 18 years old and a junior at Myers Park High School. He has hopes of going on to college to study medicine. The fact that her sons are getting an education and building a future is the thing the Mle says she likes most about her new country.
Although the future looks bright for Mle and her family, their happiness has been disrupted recently by disturbing news from Vietnam. This past July, Thai received a call on his cell phone at 1 o’clock in the morning. The Vietnamese police were on the line and said that someone should come to pick up a man who was lying in the street and very nearly dead. Thai hung up, but they called back an hour later and said that this man was a member of their family and they needed to come right away.
Thai woke his mother and brother, then went to buy a phone card so they could call Vietnam. Calling their family in the Central Highlands, they asked if there was anyone missing. They were told that Mle’s son-in-law, named Bih, had gone to an uncle’s funeral and had not yet returned. Distressed, they went to investigate and found that Bih was dead. A known Christian leader in his village, he had been attacked by Vietnamese authorities and left to die in the streets. The police had recognized an American phone number and assumed it belonged to his family in America. Mle believes that the attack, and the call, were designed to send her a message: “You may have escaped, but we still have ways of making you pay.”
“When my family found the body and called me back, I almost had a heart attack when I heard the news,” Mle said. “My daughter tells me that they now live in fear. Their movements are closely tracked, and there’s nothing I can do. I used to be so happy here, but now I’m sad. I miss my son and daughter, and my grandson and granddaughter.”
Her son Them continues to maintain an upbeat outlook. Although he is aware of the challenges faced by the Montagnards in Vietnam, he is glad to be in America. “The Vietnamese government expects us to live for their benefit. But we are people not animals. And my life is so much better now! There is freedom. Freedom to go to church, to sing to God, to go to school. Everything is freedom! I love the United States!”
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