Montagnard mother defied Hanoi until the end

Ksor H’Ble (pictured) was over 80 years old when she passed away on 18 August 2011. In recent years she has been attacked, beaten and harassed by Vietnamese security forces on a regular basis simply because she was the mother of Mr. Kok Ksor, the president of the Montagnard Foundation. Ksor H’ble lived in Vietnam and her son Kok Ksor lived in the United States. They last saw each other in the mid 1960s. Still, decades later, the Vietnamese communists continued to seek her out. After the first peaceful protests for religious freedom and indigenous land rights was enacted in February 2001 by the Degar population, Ksor H’Ble was arrested and tortured by the Vietnamese security police who beat her and broke three of her ribs. The security police had forced her to attend a staged television broadcast on Vietnamese state television aimed at discrediting her son who headed the Montagnard Foundation. Ksor H’Ble remained silent however, and refused to denounce her son. You can see footage of this staged interview from Vietnamese state television on the Youtube link below (it was after this video interview that the security forces then broke her ribs).