The United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races (FULRO; , ) was a separatist political and militant organization which conducted a decades-long insurgency in Mainland Southeast Asia during the Indochina wars with the aim of achieving autonomy for various indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities in Southern Vietnam, including the Montagnards in the Central Highlands, the Chams in Central Vietnam, and the Khmer Krom in the south. It was opposed to all forms of Vietnamese rule.
Preceded by a number of separatist groups, FULRO was founded in 1964. Initially a political movement, after 1969 it evolved into a fragmented guerrilla group that carried on simultaneous insurgencies against both the U.S.-aligned government of South Vietnam under President Nguyen Van Thieu, and against the Soviet-aligned communist government of North Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, in the context of the wider Vietnam War. FULRO's primary supporter during the 1960s and early 1970s was Cambodia under Norodom Sihanouk, with some aid sent by the People's Republic of China during the Third Indochina War.
Fractured by nature, FULRO was a symbolic alliance of various indigenous and ethnic groups in southern Vietnam formed as an armed reaction against the ethnic discrimination and land deprivation undertaken by South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and the following right-wing military junta in Saigon. FULRO's nominal leader, Y Bham Enuol, an ethnic Rhade, was put into prison by Ngo Dinh Diem in September 1958. Y Bham Enuol remained exiled in Cambodia after 1963 for the rest of the war, while Y Bih Aleo, the left-wing former co-founder of BAJARAKA (which preceded FULRO), became the Vice President of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF; or "Viet Cong") and leader of the NLF's Montagnard Autonomy Movement in 1961. FULRO organized two Montagnard uprisings among the ranks of US-trained local Civilian Irregular Defense Groups (CIDGs), in September 1964 and December 1965, which were both violently repressed by the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN). After the Vietnam War ended, the Pentagon and CIA aided the anti-communist wing of FULRO, under former US Special Forces interpreter Y Tlur Eban, in renewing the movement, this time against the newly-unified Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Their bases moved to Cambodia after the Vietnamese invasion in 1979, after which FULRO's strength was diminished irreversibly. By 1987, the movement only survived in refugee camps along the Thai-Cambodian border. FULRO was formally dissolved in 1992, when the last group of 407 FULRO fighters and their families handed in their weapons to United Nations peacekeepers in Cambodia.
FULRO built its strength mainly by recruiting Montagnard CIDGs (mostly Rhade, Jarai, and Koho). Due to the high-profile proximity and involvement of the United States Special Forces with the Montagnard CIDGs and FULRO, South Vietnamese and later Socialist Republic of Vietnam governments saw FULRO as a subversive movement used by the CIA to interfere with Vietnamese sovereignty. However, official American policy was in opposition to FULRO so as not to jeopardize its relationship with the South Vietnamese government, and in 1965 U.S. Army General William Westmoreland of the MACV issued an instruction to US soldiers ordering that they "should avoid all contacts with FULRO."
Historical origins of FULRO For centuries, Vietnamese rulers had expanded their domains southward, conquering Khmer and Cham territory as part of the Nam tiến (March to the South) and then colonizing it militarily under the đồn điền (plantation) system. The last Champa kingdom was annexed by Imperial Vietnam in 1832.
The French colonial regime ended up contributing to separatist movements among the Cham and Khmer by supporting the Islamization of Cham communities as a counterweight to the largely Buddhist Vietnamese, and by transferring a number of Khmer Krom provinces from Cambodia to its colony in Vietnam in 1949.
The South Vietnamese government that succeeded the French required Khmer Krom people to change their names to Vietnamese-sounding names in order to go to school or apply for a job, then forced students to speak only in Vietnamese, and instituted a land reform policy that settled Vietnamese on Khmer Krom land.
These measures led to the creation of several separatist groups, including the republican "Free Khmer", or Khmer Serei, movement founded by Dr. Son Ngoc Thanh in 1958, and the Kaingsaing Sar, or Khmer White Scarves movement, a semi-mystic, semi-military group, founded in 1959 by a monk, Samouk Seng. Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia supported the White Scarves movement as a counterbalance to the Khmer Serei. The Front for the Liberation of the Kampuchea-Krom, or the FLKK, absorbed the Kaingsaing Sar. The Les Kosem-led "Champa Liberation Front" was founded in Phnom Penh in 1960.
The Vietnamese had also been hostile for years to the Montagnards, the native inhabitants of the Central Highlands (Vietnam), referring to them as "savage" (mọi), based on their distinct religion, culture, language, and the Malayo-Polynesian ethnicity of some Montagnard groups such as the Jarai (Gia Rai). These hostilities intensified when Montagnard-inhabited Central Highlands became open to Vietnamese settlement under French rule.
The South Vietnamese government under Ngô Đình Diệm applied similar policies in the 1950s, abolishing the autonomous Montagnard area in 1955, then resettling Northern Vietnamese refugees on Montagnard land to colonize indigenous lands as part of state-sponsored land reform programs (Cải cách điền địa). Because the program abolished indigenous status and recognition of indigenous land ownership, it led to a Montagnard revolt against the Vietnamese administration in the Central Highlands in 1958, led by Y Bham Enuol, a Rhade intellectual and civil activist.
The South Vietnamese government persisted with its "Social and Economic Council for the Southern Highlands" without making any provision for local autonomy, claiming that these communities needed to be "developed" as they were "poor" and "ignorant". Ethnic Vietnamese were settled from the coastal regions into the highlands, with 50,000 Vietnamese settlers moving in the highlands by 1960 and 200,000 by 1963. The Highlander Liberation Front (Mặt trận Giải phóng Dân tộc Thượng, Front de Libération des Montagnards) was founded in 1955 during a meeting of indigenous Montagnards who had originally rallied to Y Thih Eban against the South Vietnamese government cadres.
Montagnard hostility was not limited, however, to the South Vietnamese government, but extended as well to North Vietnam, based on the ill-treatment their communities had received at the hands of the Vietnamese before the division of Vietnam.
BAJARAKA On May 1, 1958, a group of intellectuals, headed by a French-educated Rhade (Ê Đê) civil servant, Y Bham Enuol, established an organization seeking greater autonomy for the minorities of the Vietnamese Central Highlands. The organization was given the name BAJARAKA, which stood for four main ethnic groups: the Bahnar (Ba Na), the Jarai, the Rhade, and the Koho (Cơ Ho).
On July 25, BAJARAKA issued a notice to the embassies of France and the United States and to the United Nations, denouncing acts of racial discrimination, and requesting government intervention to secure independence. BAJARAKA held several demonstrations in Kon Tum, Pleiku, and Buôn Ma Thuột in August and September 1958. These were quickly suppressed and the most prominent leaders of the movement arrested; they would remain in jail for the next few years.
One of BAJARAKA's leaders, Y Bih Aleo, later joined the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, more commonly known as the Viet Cong.
FLHP The early 1960s were to see increasing military activity in the Central Highlands; from 1961, American military advisers had assisted in setting up armed village defence militias (the Civilian Irregular Defense Groups, CIDG).
In 1963, after the 1963 South Vietnamese coup to overthrow Ngô Đình Diệm, all the leaders of BAJARAKA were released. In an effort to integrate Montagnard ambitions, several of them were given government posts: Paul Nur, vice-president of BAJARAKA, was appointed deputy provincial chief for the province of Kon Tum, while Y Bham Enuol, the movement's president, was appointed deputy provincial governor of Đắk Lắk Province. By March 1964, with US backing, the leaders of BAJARAKA, along with representatives of other ethnic groups and of the Upper Cham people, established the Central Highlands Liberation Front (, FLHP).
The Front rapidly split into two factions. One faction, advocating peaceful means, was led by Y Bham Enuol. A second, led by Y Dhon Adrong, a former Rhade teacher, advocated violent resistance. From March to May 1964, Adrong's faction infiltrated the border with Cambodia and set up at the old French base, Camp le Rolland, in Mondulkiri Province within 15 km of the Vietnamese border, where they continued to recruit FLHP fighters.
Early history and operations during the Vietnam War
In the meantime, the regional ambitions of Prince Norodom Sihanouk had led to an effort to coordinate the operations of various separatist groups operating within South Vietnam and in the Cambodian border areas. Prince Sihanouk launched the Indochinese People's conference in Phnom Penh March 1963 with Y Bham Enuol.
Y Dhon Adrong's faction of the FLHP made contact with two other groups:
The Front for the Liberation of Champa (Front pour la Libération du Champa, FLC) led by Lieutenant Colonel Les Kosem, a Cham officer in the Royal Cambodian Army (FARK). The Liberation Front of Kampuchea Krom (Front de Liberation du Kampuchea Krom, FLKK), representing the Khmer Krom of the Mekong Delta, led by former monk Chau Dara.
Kosem, the most senior Cham officer in the Cambodian army, had been involved in Cham activism since the late 1950s, and is suspected to have been working as a double agent for both the Cambodian secret service and the French.White, T. (1992). Swords of Lightning: Special Forces and the Changing Face of Warfare. Brassey's, p. 143 Chau Dara, the founder of the FLKK, was also suspected of working for the Cambodian secret service.
These contacts were to lead to the establishment of the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races (FULRO), based on the above groups and the FLHP. The flag of FULRO was designed with three stripes: one blue (representing the sea), one red (representing the struggle of the Montagnards) and one green (representing the mountains). Three white stars on the central red stripe represented the three fronts of FULRO. A later form of the flag replaced the blue stripe with black.
While FULRO claimed to speak for the Cham, Khmer and Montagnard communities, its common bond and ideology was anti-Vietnamese sentiment, with questionable allegiance to anything else.
In 1965, FULRO released maps showing that their ultimate goal was for Montagnard and Cham independence within a revived new Champa state and for Khmers to retake Cochinchina.Christie, C. J. (1996). A Modern History of Southeast Asia: Decolonization, Nationalism and Separatism. I. B. Tauris, p. 101. It was based in Ratanakiri and Mondulkiri provinces in Cambodia, and the Central Highlands in Vietnam.
The Viet Cong approached FULRO after its founding. No agreements were reached and hostilities between FULRO and the NLF continued. The US later sought to capitalize on these communities' animosity towards the Vietnamese to use FULRO against the NLF.
The 1964 Buôn Ma Thuột rebellion