YEARNING TO BREATH FREE :

U.S. Opens Doors to Tribal Allies From War Long Ago and Far Away : Montagnards Flee Vietnam for North Carolina and Special Forces Friends (Manuel Roig-Franzia, June 9, 2002, Washington Post)

Dem and Gyik got lucky. They were away from home last February when the soldiers, the ones with the pistols and the electric batons, marched into their village in the lush central highlands of Vietnam.

Their luck gave them time. Time to slip soundlessly into the jungle. Time to run. Time to get out of Vietnam.

"We were like rabbits," said Dem, who spoke with the aid of an interpreter. "We crawled in holes."

Dem and Gyik, cousins from the village Plei Klan, joined an anguished and clandestine procession. They traveled through the jungle by night with 26 other Montagnards, a name meaning "Mountain People" given to indigenous tribes of the central highlands, tribes renowned for fighting alongside U.S. Special Forces during the Vietnam War.

They fled a Vietnamese government crackdown on Montagnards who participated in demonstrations demanding freedom of religion and a return of homelands they say have been illegally seized for conversion into massive rubber and coffee plantations. The journey that began in Plei Klan led Dem and Gyik to a Cambodian refugee camp and finally, after months of diplomatic wrangling, to the international resettlement agencies that ferried them last week to North Carolina.

Montagnards have been settling in North Carolina since the mid-1980s, drawn by the high number of U.S. Special Forces officers who live in the state. More than 3,000 Montagnards now live in North Carolina, according to relief agencies, the largest concentration outside Vietnam.

But never have so many come at once. More than 900 Montagnards, including 200 children, are scheduled to arrive in the coming weeks. Each night brings another planeload, greeted warmly by volunteers and crowds of their countrymen at airports in Charlotte, Raleigh and Greensboro.

Their arrivals are bittersweet. For years, they fought to stay on their land; now they are resigned to leaving it behind.

And so we skim off the cream of yet another culture. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 9, 2002 6:14 AM