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Khmer Krom

From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.

Khmer Krom territory

Khmer Krom (Khmer: ; Vietnamese: Khơ-me Crôm or Khơ-me dưới), which literally means "Khmer from below" ("below" referring to the lower areas of the Mekong delta), is the ethnic Khmer minority living in southern Vietnam, especially in the delta of the Mekong River.

Khmer Krom, who are ethnically the same as the Khmer people of Cambodia, are the original native inhabitants of southern Vietnam. Starting in the 17th century, the colonization of the area by Vietnamese settlers coming from northern Vietnam has turned the native Khmer Krom into a minority in their native homeland.

Some estimates (denied by the Vietnamese government) put the Khmer Krom at 8 million people (almost as numerous as the Khmer living in Cambodia), which would mean the Khmer Krom are 30% of the approximately 26 million people living in the delta of the Mekong and in the region of Ho Chi Minh City. What's more, Khmer Krom are essentially rural, and do not live in cities. Thus, if cities are discounted, Khmer Krom are still in the majority in several rural parts of southern Vietnam. On the other hand, according to Vietnamese government figures (1999 census), Khmer Krom are only 1.3 million people. When comparing with South Vietnamese censuses released before 1975, it is obvious that the 1.3 million figure is a gross underestimate. The 8 million figure is more in tune with the pre-1975 censuses.

The Khmer Krom have been a contentious issue between Vietnam and Cambodia ever since the colonization of the Mekong delta by the Vietnamese starting in the 17th century. After the French conquest in 1859, the French colonial administration confirmed the separation of the Mekong delta from the rest of Cambodia, administering it as the separate colony of Cochinchina, despite the fact that the Khmer Krom were still largely the majority in the area at the time. When independence was granted to French Indochina in 1954, the delta of the Mekong was given to the state of South Vietnam, despite protests from Cambodia. In the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge regime attacked Vietnam in an attempt to reconquer those areas of the delta still predominantly inhabited by Khmer Krom people, but, faced by Viet Cong long accustomed to war, this military adventure was a total disaster and precipitated the downfall of the Khmer Rouge, with Vietnam occupying Cambodia.

Many independent NGOs have reported violations of Khmer Krom's human rights by the Vietnamese government. Khmer Krom are reportedly forced to Vietnamize and adopt Vietnamese family names and Vietnamese language. Education of Khmer Krom is neglected and they face many hardships in their everyday life, such as difficulty to access Vietnamese health services (recent epidemics of blindness affecting children have been reported in the predominantly Khmer Krom areas of the Mekong delta), difficulty to practice their own religion (Khmer Krom are Theravada Buddhists, like Cambodian and Thai people, but unlike Vietnamese who are Mahayana Buddhists or Catholics), difficulty to find jobs outside of the fields, racism, and so on. Khmer Krom are the poorest segment of population of southern Vietnam.

Contrary to other national minorities, the Khmer Krom are largely unknown in the western world, despite efforts by exiled Khmer Krom associations such as the Khmers Kampuchea Krom Federation to publicize their issues with the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation, and until now no western government has raised the matter of Khmer Krom's human rights with the Vietnamese government.

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