Keyes Ethnic Minorities Vietnam & Thailand

ETHNIC MINORITIES IN SOUTHEAST ASIAN NATIONS THAI AND VIETNAMESE CASES

by Charles Keyes

Paper prepared for a Conference on “Minorities and Indigenous Peoples in Southeast Asia: Sustainable Development and Cultural Diversity” sponsored by The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Linguistic and Religious Minorities. Chiang Mai, Thailand, December, 2002. Charles Keyes is Professor of Anthropology and International Studies at the University of Washington.

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Introduction 1. In Asian countries the term indigenous is applicable both to minority and majority populations. Asian societies contrast, thus, with societies in the New World, Australia, and New Zealand where indigenous refers to minority populations only. In Asia a distinction is made, thus, between indigenous peoples who constitute the national majority and indigenous peoples who are minorities. Indigenous minority peoples are those peoples who are recognized in law and/or practice as being native peoples of the localities where they live within the states in which they are situated. Most such indigenous minority peoples are today citizens of the countries in which they live.1 2. In Asia another contrast is drawn between indigenous and migrant peoples. Migrant minorities are peoples who themselves or whose forbears migrated from other countries, but who now are recognized by law as being permanent residents and/or citizens of the countries in which they now live. In all countries in Asia there are also some peoples who are migrants or descendants of migrants who do not have the legal right to remain indefinitely within the countries in which they now reside. While some such migrants have the legal right to remain in these countries for some specified period of time to work, there are many more – particularly in some countries – who are deemed to be illegal migrants. In some cases such migrants are related to peoples belonging to indigenous minorities. 3. While these distinctions apply to all Asian countries, the particular ways in which they have been applied varies markedly between countries. In this paper, I will consider how these distinctions are understood in two Southeast Asian countries – Thailand and Vietnam. The contrasts between the Thai and Vietnamese cases permit some insight into the processes that have shaped the relationship between ethnic and national identities.2 The Diversity of Peoples in Premodern Mainland Southeast Asia 4. Mainland Southeast Asia, consisting of the countries of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar (Burma)3, is a region of enormous cultural and linguistic diversity. Between the 15th and 18th centuries this region was dominated by three empires: the Burman, the Siamese, and the Vietnamese centered on the basins of the major rivers of the area. The Chinese empire also impinged on the region from the north. 5. Prior to the 15th century, the dominant empire of the mainland was the Khmer empire centered on the ancient capital of Angkor. In the western part of the region, the Mon, a people speaking a related language to Khmer, were dominant in what is today Central Myanmar and Central Thailand. However, after the 15th century, the Mon and Khmer and Mon were superceded by the Burmans, Siamese and Vietnamese.

1 See, in this connection, Gray (1995). 2 I have not attempted in this paper to provide documentation for many of my points. Fuller documentation can be found in Keyes (1997, 2001, and 2002). 3 I use ‘Myanmar’ as the name of the country in the post-Independence period. For the colonial period, I use ‘Burma.’

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Subsequently, many Khmer and all Mon became subjects of the major empires. Even the small state of Cambodia was almost divided up between the Siamese and Vietnamese, but escaped that fate when it was brought under French colonial rule. 6. The authority of Burman, Siamese, and Vietnamese as well as the Chinese empires was weak outside of the core areas both because of the mountainous terrain that lay between the great riverine basins and the difficulty of communications. Even more significantly, the peoples living in the interstices between the different empires were culturally and linguistically very different from those living in the core areas. Before the establishment of colonial rule over much of mainland Southeast Asia and the concomitant influence of Western ideas and technologies in the non-colonial areas, most of the peoples living in the interstices between the empires enjoyed significant autonomy (see Leach 1960). 7. Some of these relatively autonomous peoples who lived in narrow or high valleys where they could cultivate wet rice were organized into small principalities or feudalities which were nominally vassals of one empire or another. These principalities or feudalities were almost all dominated by speakers of Tai languages – and for that reason are usually referred to by the Tai term müang (in one of its cognate forms).4 Among the most important of the premodern Tai müang were those of the peoples today known as the Shan living in northeastern Myanmar, the Yuan or Khon Müang living in northern Thailand, the Khün, also in northeastern Myanmar, the Lue, in southern Yunnan province, the Lao of northern Laos, and the Phū Thai (subsuming the ‘Black’, ‘White’, and ‘Red’ Thai) living in northwestern Vietnam. The dominant people of the Siamese empire were also Tai-speaking.5 8. In the highland areas on the peripheries of the empires and the smaller principalities were many diverse peoples who lived in villages organized around locality and kinship. The economies of almost all of these societies were based on dry rice cultivation by the method known as swiddening or shifting cultivation. Although these peoples are often referred to as tribal, it was only rarely that they coalesced around a chief and such chiefdomships were always unstable (see Leach 1954, Lehman 1963, and Kirsch 1973). Most of the upland dwelling peoples had significant connections with lowland societies. In the premodern period, however, they remained very distinctive from lowland peoples. 9. The vast majority of upland dwelling peoples living east of what is today Myanmar spoke Austroasiatic languages more or less distantly related to those of the Khmer (Cambodians) and Mon. In the upland areas of what is today northern Myanmar, the majority of upland-dwelling peoples spoke Tibeto-Burman languages which while related were still quite distinct from the Burmese language. In the highland areas of what

4 The people known as Muong in northern Vietnam who speak a language related to Vietnamese also were organized in a similar type of political structure which explains why their name is derived from the Tai word. 5 On the political structures of the Tai-speaking müang, see Condominas (1990).

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is today Central Vietnam yet other upland dwelling peoples spoke Austronesian languages, related to languages found in Indonesia and Malaysia. 10. In sum, the dominant peoples in the premodern empires of mainland Southeast Asia – the Burmans, Siamese, and Vietnamese – were the ancestors of those who would be become the dominant indigenous peoples of most of the modern nation-states of the region. But these nation-states would also come to include many diverse peoples that had once lived on the peripheries of the empires. The Making of Modern Nation-States in Mainland Southeast Asia 11. In the 19th century, beginning with the British conquest of lower Burma in 1824-1826 and ending at the end of the century with the completion of conquests by the British of Burma (1885) and the French of northern Vietnam (1887) and Laos (1893), much of the region was subsumed within the British or French empires. Only Siam (which would be renamed Thailand in 1939) remained independent. Even in Siam, the colonial threat led to a restructuring of the political order. 12. A fundamental characteristic of the new colonial-dominated political orders was the imposition of legally recognized borders between the territories of British Burma, French Indochina, and Siam. Peoples who had once lived on the frontiers of the region were now determined to be subjects of whichever political entity controlled the side of the border on which they lived. The creation of what Thongchai Winichakul (1994) has termed the geobody, that geopolitical entity brought into existence by ‘scientific’ mapping and ethnological research, laid the basis for a distinction among the indigenous peoples living within the borders of a state between a national majority and ethnic minorities. 13. Another characteristic of the colonial world of mainland Southeast Asia in the period from the mid-19th century to World War II was the large-scale migration of peoples from southeastern China to Indochina and Siam (as well as to British Malaya, Singapore and the Netherlands East Indies) and peoples from southern India to British Burma. A small number of peoples from India also went to Indochina and Siam and a somewhat larger number of Chinese went to British Burma. These migrant peoples were considered alien in contrast to the indigenous peoples of the countries in which they settled (see Furnivall 1939). Insofar as colonial and postcolonial laws permitted, many of these migrant peoples and their descendants assimilated to the societies in which they lived. Those who assimilated and gained citizenship were transformed from being alien Asians into migrant minorities. 14. Colonial authorities and even the authorities in independent Siam introduced ‘scientific’ means for distinguishing between the peoples who lived within their territories under their control. These means were, however, differently applied by different authorities and these differences led to different politics toward minorities.6 6 See Keyes (2002) for further discussion of the adoption of ‘scientific’ approaches to classification of human difference.

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15. The independent states that succeeded the colonial states as well as Siam/Thailand retained the geopolitical characteristics first established during the colonial period and all established policies that specified who within the boundaries belonged to the national majority and who were indigenous ethnic minorities and migrant ethnic minorities.

Thailand was the first independent state to emerge in the late 19th and early 20th century when internationally-recognized boundaries led to the exclusion of significant territories that had been under the Siamese empire. The name ‘Thailand’ was not officially adopted until 1939, but the geobody of modern Thailand was fixed finally in treaties between Siam and France and Great Britain in the first decade of the 20th century.

France had begun to recognize that its Indochinese Empire consisted of three nations – the Lao, the Khmer (Cambodian) and the Vietnamese – in the 1930s, but official recognition of these nations belonging to three different nation-states did not occur until 1954. After 1954, Vietnam was divided into two states – but in the eyes of the leaders of both, not two nations – and it was only in 1976 that an independent postcolonial Vietnam became finally united. 16. I will now consider the different policies towards the diversity of peoples living within the boundaries of Thailand and Vietnam that while developed on the basis of similar principles are still contrastive. If the other independent countries of mainland Southeast Asia were also considered, further contrasts could be recognized. But the Vietnamese and Thai cases provide the clearest contrasts. Thailand and Its Minorities7 17. King Chulalongkorn (reigned 1868-1910) is clearly recognized by Thai and non-Thai alike as the monarch who led Siam through a transformation into a modern nation-state. He and his associates became acutely aware that both British and French authorities were using ethnological criteria to justify the drawing of boundaries between those peoples claimed to be subjects of British Burma or Indochina and those who were recognized by the European authorities as subjects of Siam. During the 19th century, Siam was compelled to accept that many peoples previously living under the authority of Siamese empire were now subjects of neighboring colonial territories. 18. In order to prevent further cessions of Siamese territory, King Chulalongkorn and his associates adopted an inclusivist definition the Thai nation (chāt Thai) to minimize differences between certain peoples. Most significantly, the Siamese government adopted the policy that any language belonging to the Tai language family spoken by people in Thailand was a dialect of the national language. This was the case even though many of these dialects were as different from standard Thai as Hindi was from Bengali, Spanish from Portuguese, or Dutch from German (see Smalley 1994; also see Diller 1991). The policy of inclusivist nationalism led to linguistic differences being associated with regions of the country rather than marking differences between peoples.

7 The following discussion is based primarily on Keyes (1997).

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19. Table 1 shows estimates of ethnic and ethnoregional groupings in Thailand. However, from an official point of view, most of the distinctions shown in the table are considered to be local variants of the people who constitute the Thai nation. 20. The most significant application of the inclusivist policy was toward the peoples of northeastern Thailand who in precolonial times been subsumed under the rubric of Lao and who, in fact, spoke languages and followed cultural traditions that were indistinguishable by ethnolinguistic criteria from those found among the dominant peoples of the Mekong Valley in what was then French Laos. With the French having made Laos a component of the Indochinese empire, the Siamese government re-christened those who had previously been recognized as Lao in northeastern Siam as ‘people of the northeast’ (Khon Īsān).8 This term was widely adopted not only by government officials but also by a majority of people in the northeastern region of the country who might otherwise have been recognized as Lao. People in this region thus evolved an ethnoregional rather than an ethnic identity (see Keyes 1967). 21. In precolonial times the Tai-speaking peoples of northern Thailand had also been designated as ‘Lao’ by the Siamese court. These people were, however, linguistically and culturally closer to Tai speaking peoples in Myanmar (‘Shan’ and Khün) and the southern part of Yunnan (Lue) than to the Lao of Laos. While the original ethnoregional name for the peoples of northern Thailand – Khon Phayāp – did not prove to be as popular as Khon Īsān, the peoples of northern Thailand still became known by an ethnoregional name – Khon Müang, peoples of the provinces – rather than by an ethnonym. 22. The dominant people of southern Thailand (Khon Pak Tai, ‘people who speak the southern dialect’) are also distinguished ethnoregionally rather than ethnically. Many smaller Tai-speaking groups (Lue, Shan, Yo, and so on) are, from an official point of view, invisible and are considered to belong to the Tai-speaking ethnoregional category of the region in which they live. In recent years, there has been significant research carried out on different Tai-speaking peoples both within Thailand and outside of the country. But this research has not led to any change in policy towards diversity. Instead, all Tai-speaking peoples are assumed to share a common origin and an underlying common culture. 23. The policy of subsuming peoples other than the dominant Tai-speaking people of Central Thailand as belonging to the national majority also was extended to some non-Tai-speaking peoples. In particular, peoples speaking Mon-Khmer languages, including the very significant populations (approximately 2.6% of the total population of Thailand) of peoples speaking languages recognized by linguists as being ‘Northern Khmer’ as well

8 The terms Īsān was derived from a Sanskrit term. Even though Sanskrit is a language associated with India, Siamese/Thai have since at least the 14th or 15th century used it as source for technical terms. In the modern period, the Siamese/Thai government has preferred to use Sanskrit-derived terms for new concepts and technologies rather than borrowing Western terms. This linguistic policy began to change after World War II when the colonial threat receded and America became the primary source of modern cultural ideas and concepts. Nonetheless, many of the words introduced in the late 19th and early 20th century remain in use.

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peoples who call themselves Kui and were formerly known by the Siamese as Suai living in northeastern Thailand were never officially recognized as being ethnically distinctive. 24. The most striking application of the inclusivist policy in Thailand relates to migrants and descendants of migrants from China.

During the last half of the 19th century and first part of the 20th century, tens of thousands of people from Southeastern China migrated to Thailand. The percentage of Chinese in the population continued to grow significantly until World War II when migration from China was effectively ended first by the War and then by anti-immigration policies adopted after the War. In 1947 the Chinese, including both migrants and locally-born Chinese, accounted for 12.0 percent of the total population of the country (Skinner 1957: 183). From the beginning of the 20th century through the end of the 1930s when migration from China effectively came to an end, governments of Siam/Thailand followed a policy of assimilation (nayōbāi phasom klom klün) toward the Chinese that was directly parallel to the policy of national integration adopted with regard to indigenous peoples.

As a consequence of these policies of assimilation and national integration, by the time Siam was re-christened as Thailand in 1939, the vast majority of the population of the country accepted that their national identity superseded whatever other linguistic and cultural heritage they might have.

As in other countries in Southeast Asia, most of those in Thailand who have filled roles of economic middlemen and middle and large-scale capitalists have been people of Chinese descent. From the 1930s on members of the Thai elite –most notably those in the military who dominated Thai politics through the 1970s – began to forge alliances, often through intermarriage, with Chinese businessmen. Intermarriage in Thailand as in southern China contributed to the blurring of identities.

Since World War II people of Chinese descent in Thailand have officially been recognized as Thai with the exception of a small number who do not hold Thai citizenship. This official acceptance has made it possible for many of Chinese descent to assume very significant positions not only in business but also in government. Since the mid-1990s not only has the parliament been dominated by people of Chinese descent, but three of the four recent prime ministers have been of Chinese descent.

Unofficially, those of Chinese descent who identify as Thai are known as lūk cīn, literally, children (or descendants) of Chinese or as Sino-Thai in English. These Sino-Thai speak standard Thai as their primary language and few actually speak any Chinese language. There are, however, particularly in Bangkok, upwards of 4 million people who speak a Chinese language at least as well as they speak standard Thai. While these people are not officially recognized as distinct, unofficially and in their own identification they are ‘Chinese’ (cīn) rather than Sino-Thai.

The official status of those of Chinese descent, including those who speak one or more Chinese language and who identify as ‘Chinese’, as ‘Thai’ is in marked contrast to the status descendants of Chinese migrants have in other Southeast Asian countries. 25. The policies designed to downplay differences in Thailand in order to promote a sense of common national identity among both migrant and indigenous peoples in the country have, however, not been extended successfully to all peoples living within the

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boundaries of Thailand. The most significant peoples who are ethnically distinct within Thailand are the Thai-Malays and the Chāo Khao or ‘hill tribes.’ 26. Most Malay-speaking Muslims of Southern Thailand have, to a significant extent, resisted assimilation and continue to be recognized officially as a distinct element of the Thai population. In recent years efforts to bring Thai-Malays into closer integration with Thai society have had some success, as manifest in the facts that Wan Muhamad Nor Matha, a Thai Malay, has served as Speaker of the Parliament and is currently Minister of Interior and Surin Pitsuwan, another Thai Muslim, has been foreign minister. Nonetheless, most Thai-Malays continue to see themselves as only marginally part of the Thai nation. While most have simply ignored the Thai world in their everyday interactions in local contexts, some have joined a resistance movement that seeks autonomy or independence under the name of Patani, the name of a former semi-autonomous sultanate in the premodern period. Because the Thai government has also adopted American and international concerns about the association of terrorism with Islamic movements, the Thai Malays have become even more marked as distinctive within Thailand. 27. The upland dwelling peoples of northern Thailand were largely ignored by Thai governments until the 1950s. Then, because of concerns about border security that developed after Myanmar became independent and the Communist Party of China took over the government in China and because of international pressures on Thailand to curb the production and trade in opium in northern Thailand, the Thai government began to give special attention to these peoples. A number of very different peoples – Karen, Hmong, Iu Mien (Yao), Akha, Lahu, Lisu, and a few others – were subsumed under the official category of ‘hill tribes’ (chāo khao). Policies toward the hill tribes have been predicated primarily on presumed negative characteristics of these peoples. But the recognition of even nominally positive attributes also contribute to the marking of ‘hill tribes’ as radically ‘other’ in comparison to the Thai.

• Swidden or shifting cultivation has been deemed to be destructive to watersheds and modern forestry management and has, thus, been banned. As a concomitant, it has been official policy to resettle upland dwelling peoples in lowland areas. Peoples who continue to live in the uplands, but no longer practice swiddening, are still often assumed to still be following practices that are destructive of watersheds (see Pinkaew 2000).

• Although only some upland dwelling peoples (most notably the Hmong) ever engaged in producing opium, Thai governments since the late 1950s have made the eradication of opium production a primary major element in policies toward upland dwelling peoples. The government and the Royal Family have instituted programs to persuade upland producers to shift to production of other crops. By the 1990s, opium production had effectively ended in northern Thailand and former opium-producers had shifted to producing cabbages, flowers, and other crops for sale instead.

• Many of the upland dwelling peoples of northern Thailand have been presumptively assumed to be illegal migrants. Thus, even many of those whose families have been in Thailand for generations have been denied citizenship.

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Without citizenship, some people from upland communities have turned to such illegal trades as prostitution and drug trafficking.

• The only attribute of the hill tribes that has been accorded positive recognition is the attraction that they hold for tourists. The promotion of tribal crafts, trekking in the northern hills, presentation of tribal dances and music, and advertisements in tourist brochures have all had the effect of emphasizing the different-ness of the hill tribes (see Cohen 1996).

28. Many peoples living within Thailand today or in the recent past have been refugees from the conflicts that have beset Thailand’s neighbors since World War II. Others from neighboring countries have entered Thailand as economic migrants in search of jobs. A small percentage of these people have been allowed to become permanent residents and even citizens of Thailand. The most significant case is that of Vietnamese who fled into Thailand after 1954 and who were finally officially allowed in the late 1980s to acquire residency. Most refugees and economic migrants from neighboring countries have officially been designated, in contrast, as illegal migrants.

In the 1970s the majority of illegal migrants were from Cambodia and Laos. By the early 1990s almost all of these had been resettled in third countries or repatriated to their homelands. Although some refugees and economic migrants had begun to come to Thailand from Myanmar after the military coup in that country in 1962, the trickle turned to a flood from the late 1980s on. In early 2002 there were at least 1 million people from Myanmar living in Thailand who were deemed to be illegal migrants. 29. Because Thailand has been so successful in integrating its economy with the world economy, many people from other countries have come to Thailand with official permission to work for companies or international organizations. Despite the economic crisis of 1997, there are still tens of thousands of expatriate workers in Thailand from Europe, the United States, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and elsewhere. While these expatriates are not permanent residents of Thailand, their presence has had the effect of underscoring how Thailand can accommodate significant diversity within its borders. The openness of Thailand to expatriate workers is in keeping with the inclusivist policies adopted by Thailand toward the diverse peoples within its boundaries ever since it was launched on a project to become a modern nation-state in the late 19th century. At the same time, these inclusivist policies have had the effect of marginalizing some peoples whose cultural distinctiveness is given no recognition at all. Notable among these are the Khmer and Kui of northeastern Thailand. There are, moreover, some peoples – notably the Thai Malays and the hill tribes – who have been marginalized because their ethnic distinctiveness has been accentuated. Vietnam: Diversity Emphasized, Diversity Downplayed 30. In the precolonial period, the governments of successive Vietnamese empires promoted policies of incorporation of territories beyond the domains of the Red River Delta which was the homeland of Vietnamese civilization and the Vietnamization of the diverse peoples who were brought under the authority of the Vietnamese emperor. Over the centuries, the Vietnamese ‘civilizing mission’, based on a model originally

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established in the Chinese empire, succeeded in assimilating peoples of diverse backgrounds to a Sino-Vietnamese culture. Nonetheless, there still remained many peoples in the territories of the Vietnamese empire who remained, from the Vietnamese point-of-view, ‘barbarians’ or ‘savages.’ 31. When the French conquered Vietnam in the 19th century and incorporated it into French Indochina they found a country that was dominated by the Vietnamese (or Kinh), but which had many other peoples living within the new territory of Indochina. Like the British in Burma, the French rulers of Vietnam used ethnology as a means for determining who these peoples were. While French ethnological research drew on premodern Vietnamese ideas about diversity of peoples, they also employed Western ‘scientific’ approaches that resituated diversity in new ways (see Hickey 1982 and Salemink 1995) 32. The French created an administrative structure in Indochina that accorded recognition to some of the differences between peoples in their colonial domain. In addition to establishing separate administrative structures for Laos and Cambodia, they also separated the Mekong Delta and nearby areas from the rest of Vietnam as a distinct administrative unit – Cochin China. The areas separated were those that had only relatively recently (17th and 18th centuries) been annexed by the Vietnamese empire. They contained significant populations of Khmer and Cham who had not yet been assimilated by the Vietnamese. Moreover, Cochin China, and particularly its capital of Saigon, attracted large numbers of Chinese migrants in the late 19th and early 20th century. The establishment by the French of direct rule over Cochin China as distinct from nominally indirect rule over the other two parts of Vietnam – which the French called Annam (central Vietnam) and Tonkin (northern Vietnam) – had the unintended consequence of ensuring that diversity in southern Vietnam would be more marked than in the rest of the country after independence was gained. 33. The French found the highland area of what is today Central Vietnam to be populated by numerous localized groups speaking Austronesian languages (related to languages of Indonesia and Malaysia) and Austroasiatic (Mon-Khmer) languages. While some of these peoples – notably the Austronesian-speaking Jarai (Vietnamese, Gia Rai) – had religio-political leaders whose authority was accepted by peoples from many local communities, most of the upland peoples lived in relatively small autonomous communities organized around kinship and locality. French ethnographers also determined on the basis of their research that the Montagnards, ‘hill people’, as they called the upland dwellers of this region, had little historical relationship with the Vietnamese. In premodern times they had had closer connections with the Khmer kingdom and Lao principalities. On the basis of this research, the French colonial government instituted a separate administration of the highlands. This had the effect of intensifying the sense of autonomy and distinctiveness of the different Montagnard groups from the Vietnamese. 34. While the French rulers of Indochina also commissioned ethnological research on the diverse peoples living in the northern highlands, they also recognized on the basis of

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this research that most of the peoples of this region had had long connections with the Vietnamese. They found this was particularly true of many of the peoples speaking Tai languages as well as the Muong who were closely related to the Kinh. It was only late in French rule, in an effort to ‘divide and rule’, that the French offered autonomy to the Black and White Thai people (today, collectively known as the Thái) of northern Vietnam. 35. During the Vietnamese war of independence against France from 1946 to 1954, the Viet Minh, the front led by Ho Chi Minh, was based primarily in the northern highlands. Many non-Kinh people living in the highlands provided crucial support for the revolutionaries. In turn, Ho and the leaders of the Viet Minh became very aware of the diversity of peoples living in the highlands. The decisive battle at which the French were defeated was at Dien Bien Phu in the highlands in an area populated by several non-Kinh peoples. 36. After 1954 when Vietnam was divided into two countries – the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the north and the Republic of Vietnam in the south – the two postcolonial governments adopted contrastive approaches to the diversity of peoples under their authority. 37. The government of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) which controlled the Central Highlands as well as the Mekong Delta considered non-Kinh peoples to be ethnic minorities. The government of Ngo Dinh Diem adopted an assimilationist policy toward the Cham, Khmer, Chinese, and Montagnards (Hickey 1982: 6). This policy in the Central Highlands and among the Cham and Khmer, actually had the opposite effect than intended. Instead of ‘becoming’ Vietnamese, these diverse peoples began to organize ethnonationalist movements with the goal of maintaining or gaining greater autonomy from the South Vietnamese state or to join the northern-backed Communist-led National Liberation Front because of their assessment that the NLF would grant them autonomy. This reaction to the South Vietnamese state would also shape stances taken by these people toward the government of a united Vietnam. 38. In the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the policy adopted by the government was influenced by theories of human diversity rooted in the work of Marx, Engels, Stalin, and Lenin and applied in the Soviet Union and Peoples Republic of China. Beginning in the 1950s the government turned to ethnologists trained primarily in the Soviet Union to carry out a project to classify the peoples of Vietnam (see Dang Nghiem Van 1998). 39. Key to understanding postcolonial policies of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam towards the diverse peoples living within the boundaries of the country is the concept of dan toc, a term that is cognate with the Chinese minzu. A dan toc was defined, following Stalin, as being: “A stable community, formed over a historical period, involving relationships of identity in regard to language, habitat range, socio-economic activities, cultural characteristics – a community whose members are conscious of their shared ethnic identity, on the basis of the foregoing relations” (Dang Nghiem Van 1998: 14). The term dan toc can mean the ‘nation’, but its more usual meaning is to designate

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the diverse peoples or ethnic groups who make up the Vietnamese nation . When used in the second sense, the term is often subsumed in the phrase dan toc thieu so, meaning ‘ethnic minorities’. 40. The ethnological project undertaken from the 1950s on was shaped by a distinctive Vietnamese nationalist interpretation of Marxist theory. While the diverse groups of Vietnam, especially those in the highlands, were viewed as being products of a universal evolution of social formations, they were also seen as sharing similarities that were a product of a unique ‘national’ unification of Vietnam that began in the prehistoric period. In other words, non-Kinh dan toc are assumed to share with the Kinh a common nuoc, a ‘country’. This approach of the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam toward the diverse peoples living under its authority was integrative, rather than assimilationist. That is, differences would be recognized which would distinguish ethnic minorities (dan toc thieu so) from the dominant Kinh, but these minorities together with the Kinh are posited as belonging to a single nation. 41. After the unification of Vietnam in 1976, the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam instituted a policy under which all peoples within Vietnam would be subsumed under the system of classification originally instituted only in the North. On the basis of ethnological research, it was officially determined that there are 54 dan toc in Vietnam. As can be seen in Table 2 summarizing the results of the ethnological research, Vietnam is officially recognized as being a multi-ethnic society. While such recognition represents a marked break with the precolonial Vietnamese approach which considered non-Kinh to be barbarians or savages, the new system predicated on Marxian evolutionary assumptions, still situates the diverse peoples of the country in a hierarchy with the Kinh at the top. 42. In practice, Vietnamese policies toward the non-Kinh dan toc have differed significantly form one region and one people to another been quite different. A major difference obtains between the dan toc of northern Vietnam and those of central and southern Vietnam. 43. The Tày of northern Vietnam, the largest minority dan toc in the country, clearly hold a position high in the hierarchy because although in their local communities the Tày speak Tai-related languages and follow distinctive traditions, they are almost universally bi-cultural and bilingual. Thus, when they leave their home communities, they are, for all intents and purposes, indistinguishable from the Kinh. The high status of the Tày is manifest in the fact that the current Secretary-General of the Communist Party of Vietnam is a Tày. 44. Several other groups in the north – the Tai-speaking Thái and Nung as well as the Muong – are also peoples that historically as well as today have had relatively close relations with the Kinh. The Thái, however, remain more distinctive because in the premodern period they had relatively autonomous principalities, because they have their own tradition of literacy, and because some Thái were persuaded by the French to support a quasi-independent ‘Thái federation’ during the French-Vietnam war.

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45. The only other highland peoples in northern Vietnam that have any significant visibility outside of local areas are the Hmong and Dao (known as Yao or Iu Mien in Thailand, Laos, and China). As in Thailand, the Hmong have been viewed in negative ways because the type of swidden cultivation they traditionally followed was deemed destructive to watersheds and because they were once major producers of opium. While little opium is still produced in Vietnam and many Hmong have been persuaded to adopt permanent field cultivation, the recent rapid spread of evangelical Christianity among the Hmong has added another reason for the Hmong to be viewed negatively by the Vietnamese authorities. The Dao tend to be seen in the same terms as the Hmong, although somewhat less negatively. As in Thailand, Hmong and Dao have recently begun to attract significant tourist attention. And, as in Thailand, this attention has served to reinforce their distinctiveness. 46. Many of the other peoples living in the highlands of northern Vietnam as well many in the Central Highlands are effectively invisible. They are very small in numbers, live in marginal or remote areas, and rarely involve themselves in activities beyond their local communities. Because of their marginality, they are also among the poorest of peoples living in Vietnam and have access to few government services. 47. The Cham people were once the dominant people in what is today central Vietnam. A Cham kingdom, Champa, had been established as early as the 3rd century CE and during the 7th – 12th century the Indianized kingdoms of Champa were a significant power in mainland Southeast Asia. But between the 11th and 15th centuries, the Vietnamese empire steadily absorbed through conquest the territories of Champa and in 1471 defeated Cham forces in a decisive battle. In the wake of the destruction of their Indianized civilization, some of the Cham population must have ‘become’ Vietnamese either through cultural change or intermarriage or both. Many who resisted assimilation converted to Islam, a religion introduced by missionaries from the Malay-speaking world whose languages are close to Cham. Although tourist interest in the remains of the Indianized traditions of Champa has contributed to a more positive interest on the part of Vietnamese in the Cham, this interest has not extended to those Cham who adhere to Islam. 48. The approximately 1,000,000 Khmer Krom, as the Khmer of Vietnam are known locally and in Cambodia, constitutes the remnants of what had been the dominant population of the Mekong Delta before the mid-18th century. After the Vietnamese conquest of the Mekong Delta in 1758 Kinh became dominant in the region, primarily through migration. The Nguyen emperors, after they assumed control of the Vietnamese empire at the beginning of the 19th century, instituted a policy that placed Khmer-speaking peoples both in the Mekong Delta and in Cambodia proper under a Sino-Vietnamese system of administration and promoted the assimilation of Khmer to Vietnamese culture (Woodside 1971: 113, 245-46). Despite this policy, the Khmer Krom have continued to maintain a very distinctive cultural tradition with their Theravādin Buddhist temple-monasteries (vat) and the monks who inhabit them providing a strong institutional basis for the perpetuation of their distinctiveness. The Khmer written

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language which is taught in the vat makes it possible for Khmer Krom to see themselves as members of a greater Cambodian Buddhist community.

During the domination of Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge headed by Pol Pot from 1975 to 1979, many Khmer from Cambodia fled into Vietnam. After the Vietnamese army forced the Khmer Rouge out of Phnom Penh and put in place a new government led by some of these refugees, Khmer Krom monks were recruited to help re-establish Buddhism inside Cambodia. This latter act implied recognition on the part of the Vietnamese government that the Khmer Krom and the Khmer of Cambodia share fundamentally the same culture. At the same time, the Vietnamese controlling influence over the post-Pol Pot government echoed the efforts of the 19th century Nguyen emperors to integrate all Khmer within a Vietnamese world.

While few Khmer Krom have joined resistance movements against Vietnamese authority, they still evince in their strong adherence to their vat-centered culture an unequivocal distinct identity from the neighboring Kinh. 49. The indigenous minorities who have most contested Vietnamese domination belong to the ethnic minorities of the Central Highlands. As noted above, prior to French rule these numerous peoples speaking a variety of languages had developed only weak connections with the Vietnamese. French ethnological research in the area led to a recognition of a number of different ’tribes’, primarily on the basis of linguistic evidence. By the late 1930s “French ethnographers and administrators started to stress the essential unity of the Montagnards…” who needed “to be protected by the French” (Salemink 1995: 263). French policy initiated a process whereby some Montagnards – particularly those from the Jarai [Gia Rai], Rhadé [Édê] and Bahnar peoples – began to understand themselves as ethnically distinct from the Vietnamese. This process was intensified as relations developed between people from different tribes who studied in the same schools and became adherents of the same Protestant Christian churches.

Toward the end of their rule, the French government established the Pays Montagnards du Sud-Indochinoise for a separate administration of the peoples of the Central Highlands. After independence, the Republic of Vietnam sought to diminish the ethnic separateness of the Montagnards through assimilationist policies and through support for settlement of Kinh in the Central Highlands. Many of the Montagnard leaders became deeply resentful of these efforts and either turned to the National Liberation Front which they anticipated would recognize their autonomy once it achieved power or, even more frequently, to pan-ethnic movements. The most important of these movements was the Front Unifié de Lutte des Races Opprimées (FULRO) which also found support among Khmer and Cham.

During the American war in Vietnam, American forces stationed in the Central Highlands showed sympathy for the efforts of Montagnards to maintain their distinctiveness. As a consequence of the relationship established between certain American military units and the Montagnards, some Montagnard refugees were subsequently resettled in the United States.

After the unification of Vietnam, the hopes of Montagnard leaders that the new government would accord them autonomy went unrealized. Swidden cultivation was banned and commercial cropping of upland areas was promoted and this favored Kinh migrants to the area. Traditional religious practices were suppressed and the evangelical

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Christian churches which many Montagnards had joined were not given official recognition.

In February 2001 the long simmering resentments of many Montagnards toward the Vietnamese government were transformed into open protests. Although the government has claimed that these protests were instigated by outside forces – meaning the resettled Montagnards in the United States and their supporters – the causes are primarily local.9 The Montagnards of the Central Highlands clearly have demonstrated both collectively or as individual groups they are not like other dan toc in Vietnam. 50. As Table 2 shows, the Hoa, as those of Chinese descent are known in Vietnam, constitute the third largest minority ethnic group in the country. Because Vietnam has been so strongly influenced by Chinese culture, it might be expected that Chinese migrants to Vietnam would have no difficulty in assimilating to Vietnamese culture. Prior to the colonial period, most Chinese migrants to Vietnam did, in fact, ‘become’ Vietnamese after a generation or two. The conditions that led to the existence of a separate Hoa dan toc in Vietnam were first created in the colonial period.

The significant expansion of an export economy in Cochin China (southern Vietnam) beginning in the late 19th century stimulated a very large migration of people from Southeastern China especially to Saigon. The French adoption of a Romanized orthography for writing Vietnamese meant that Vietnamese and Chinese no longer shared a common written language. The French recognized the congrégations organized by the Chinese for the migrants from different parts of southeastern China who shared a common speech. They also allowed the Chinese to establish separate schools.

When Vietnam was reunified in 1976 under the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam the Hoa of southern Vietnam was clearly ethnically very distinctive. Because of their dominant role in the economy, the government’s policy of eliminating private enterprise was targeted primarily at the Hoa. The status of the Hoa in Vietnam became even more difficult after China invaded northern Vietnam in 1979 to ‘punish’ the country for its invasion of Cambodia. For these reasons, between 1976 and 1981 hundreds of thousands of Hoa fled the country, making up the majority of the so-called ‘boat people’.

In the early 1980s the government of Vietnam moved to halt what was becoming, de facto although not in intention, the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the Hoa in Vietnam. In 1982 a decree affirmed that the Hoa were Vietnamese citizens with the same rights and duties as all other citizens in the country. And in 1986 another decree lifted some remaining restrictions on Hoa entry into certain occupations such as the armed forces (Amer, 1997: 21-22). Nonetheless, the Hoa still remain a distinctive ethnic group in Vietnam today. 51. While Vietnam has not been the recipient of many new migrants from neighboring countries – an exception being some Khmer who fled into Vietnam during the Pol Pot period in Cambodia – it has been the source of a very large number of refugees who have resettled in other countries. By the 1990s well over a million and a half people of Vietnamese descent were living in the United States, France, Australia, Canada, and other countries. Officially in Vietnam, those who have resettled abroad are

9 The best analysis of the protests and their causes is by An Independent WriteNet Researcher (2002).

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termed Viet Kieu or ‘overseas Vietnamese’ with no distinction being made between migrants who came from ethnically distinct communities in Vietnam.

Although many of those who fled as refugees were and still are very hostile to the Vietnamese government, since the 1980s a rapidly increasing number of Viet Kieu have returned to Vietnam to visit and even to work. For this reason and because since the mid-1980s, overseas Vietnamese, particularly those in the United States, have been the largest source of foreign exchange in Vietnam, the category of Viet Kieu has become far more significant than most of the categories in the official list of dan toc. The Viet Kieu, despite this name, are not simply Vietnamese living temporarily outside of the boundaries of Vietnam. Most who are classified as Viet Kieu when in Vietnam actually are foreign nationals – that is, they hold citizenship in a country other than Vietnam. Many also reject, as I have shown in another paper (Keyes 2001), the implication that their primary identity is Vietnamese by insisting that they are Vietnamese-American or Vietnamese-Canadian – that is members of an ethnic minority in another country. The existence of the Viet Kieu renders problematic the nationalist tenet that all the peoples of Vietnam are united within the boundaries of the country. Conclusions 52. As the two cases discussed in this paper demonstrate, while the premises on which ethnic minorities are distinguished derive in part from factors that are characteristic of all modern nation-states in a region such as Asia where the dominant peoples of these states are themselves indigenous, some of the criteria for distinguishing minorities are the product of particular historical processes. 53. Fundamental to situating certain peoples as ethnic minorities within these or any nation-state is a political definition as to whom within the county belong to the national majority. In both Vietnam and Thailand some cultural differences are subsumed within the overarching definition of the nation by stipulating that these differences are regional rather than ethnic. Thai governments have, however, gone much further than the Vietnamese in extending this criterion. As a consequence, peoples who might otherwise have been distinguished as ethnically Lao or as a number of other Tai-speaking ethnic groups (comparable to such groups in Vietnam) or even as Khmer or Kui are considered to belong to regional components of the Thai nation. I have termed the Thai policy as inclusivist because it has allowed for cultural difference rather than promoted assimilation. 54. Toward the indigenous peoples who are not considered to belong the national majorities, Vietnamese and Thai governments have followed very different approaches. For the Thai, only those peoples who are considered problematic – notably, the Muslim Thai Malays and the ‘hill tribes’ – are distinguished as being ethnic minorities. The Vietnamese, in contrast, have employed ‘scientific’ theories of Marxian ethnology to distinguish among all peoples not considered to be Kinh, the dominant people. Despite all such peoples being subsumed under the rubric of dan toc thieu so, or minority ethnic groups, these 53 putative groups have, as I have shown, very different relationships to the Kinh and to the Vietnamese nation.

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55. There are also very striking contrasts between the approaches taken by Vietnam and Thailand toward migrant peoples. The Thai government adopted an assimilationist policy toward the very large population of descendants of migrants from China. So successful was this policy that today Lūk Cīn have preeminent roles in both the Thai economy and its polity. In contrast, the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam has adopted policies toward the descendants of migrants from China that have ensured that these people remain a very distinctive ethnic minority. 56. Thai governments have taken a very different stance toward migrants who have come to the country in the post-World War II period to that taken earlier to migrant Chinese. With rare exception, migrants who have not been allowed in on temporary work permits are considered illegal migrants. In other words, they are allowed neither the opportunity to become ethnic minorities nor to assimilate to the national majority. 57. Vietnam has faced a very different issue with regard to migrants. In contrast to Thailand, there has been a very large exodus of people from Vietnam who have settled permanently in other countries where they have, for the part, become migrant minorities in their new homes. The existence of a large ‘overseas Vietnamese’ (Viet Kieu) population has the potential for rendering problematic the boundaries of the Vietnamese nation. 58. Because the relationship between nation and ethnic minorities is determined primarily by particular historical processes, one can safely predict that the national and ethnic composition of both Vietnam and Thailand will undergo yet further transformations in the future.

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Table 1. THAILAND: ETHNIC AND ETHNOREGIONAL COMPOSITION

By Size Ethnic/ethnoregional Category

Other Names

Language Family Location % 1990

Thai (speakers of standard Thai; includes most Sino-Thai or lūk cīn)

Tai Mainly in cities 19.5

Thai klāng (Central Thai)

Siamese Tai Central Thailand 27.0

Īsān (northeastern Thai)

Lao Tai Northeastern Thailand 22.9

Khon Müang (northern Thai)

Yuan Tai Northern Thailand 9.0

Khon Pak Tai (Southern Thai) (includes most Tai-

speaking Muslims)

Tai Southern Thailand 8.0

Cīn Chinese Sinitic Mainly Bangkok 6.8

Khamēn Khmer Austroasiatic or Mon-Khmer

Northeastern and eastern Thailand

2.1

Thai-Malay Pattani Malay

Austronesian Southern Thailand 1.9

Karen (one of the officially recognized hill tribes

[chāo khao])

Karennic Northern and Western Thailand

0.7

Other Tai-speaking peoples

Tai Northeastern and northern Thailand

0.6

Kui, Kuy Suai Austroasiatic or Mon-Khmer

Northeastern Thailand 0.5

Hmong (one of the officially recognized hill tribes

[chāo khao])

Miao Miao-Yao Northern Thailand 0.2

Other hill tribes [chāo khao])

Most Tibeto-Burman; also Yao

and small Austroasiatic groups

Northern Thailand 0.2

Vietnamese Yuan Viet-Muong Mainly Northeastern Thailand

0.2

Other and Unidentified 0.4 TOTAL 100.0

Sources: The estimates in this table are based on census data and on the following: Kunstadter (1967: 397-400); United States Department of the Army (1970); Smalley (1994: Appendix B); Skinner (1957: 181-90) (for Chinese and Sino-Thai); McKinnon and Wanat Bhruksasri(1983) and Lewis and Lewis (1984) (for tribal peoples).

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Table 2. VIETNAM ‘ETHNIC GROUPS’ (DAN TOC) By Size

People

(Vietnamese Name)

English name Language Family Location % 1989

Kinh, Viet Vietnamese Viet-Muong countrywide 86.9 Tay Tay, Tho Tai-Kadai Northern Highlands 1.9 Thái Black Thai; White

Thai Tai-Kadai Northern Highlands 1.6

Hoa Chinese Sinitic Urban centers, mainly in Ho Chi Minh City

1.4

Muong Muong Viet-Muong Northern Highlands 1.4 Kho Me Khmer, Khmer

Krom Mon-Khmer, Austroasiatic

Southern Vietnam 1.4

Nung Nung Tai-Kadai Northern Highlands 1.1 Hmong Hmong (Meo) Miao-Yao Northern Highlands 0.9

Dao Yao, Mien Miao-Yao Northern Highlands 0.7 Gai Rai Jarai Austronesian or

Malayo-Polonesian Central Highlands 0.4

É Dê Rhadé Austronesian or Malayo-Polonesian

Central Highlands 0.3

Cham Cham Austronesian or Malayo-Polonesian

Central and Southern Vietnam

0.2

San Chay San Chay Tai-Kadai Northern Highlands 0.2 Ba Na Bahnar Mon-Khmer,

Austroasiatic Central Highlands 0.2

Xa Dang Sedang Mon-Khmer, Austroasiatic

Central Highlands 0.2

16 other groups Mon-Khmer, Austroasiatic

Central and Southern Highlands

0.8

4 other Tai groups Tai-Kadai Northern Highlands 0.2 2 other groups Sinitic Northern Highlands 0.1 2 other groups Austronesian or

Malayo-Polonesian Central Highlands 0.1

4 Kadai groups Tai-Kadai Northern Highlands <0.1 6 other groups Tibeto-Burman Northern Highlands <0.1

TOTAL 100.0 Sources: Khong Dien (1995); Nguyen Van Huy (1997a, 1997b, 1998)