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AFP
Dong Van, Vietnam
Vuong Duy Bao surveys his ancestral palace, a vestige of Vietnam’s marginalised Hmong ethnic minority that he says was taken from his family by local officials.
The wooden structure is laden with historic markers: opium flowers carved into pillars in a nod to the region’s once-booming trade, and an iron fence made with metal imported from former colonial ruler France.
Built in 1903 by Bao’s warlord grandfather with his opium fortune, the retired civil servant claims local authorities took possession of the property in the northern Ha Giang province from his family and are now refusing to return it.
“Hmong people all over the world acknowledge this as (our) family home... so we can’t lose it,” he told AFP from the building, which authorities run as a museum.
Both sides agree it is an architectural treasure since the historically nomadic Hmong rarely stayed long enough in one place to build anything lasting.
Bao had been living in Hanoi, but on return to the family home, he discovered local authorities had taken ownership of the palace and rejected his claim to it because he could not provide deeds. He branded the request “absurd” and said official documents did not exist when the property was built but his family’s connection to it was set out in history books about the local area and even in pictures of it displayed in the museum.
Many Hmong fear the government is simply commandeering their culture to boost tourism dollars. For Bao, his battle for repossession goes beyond the personal. He believes Hmong heritage belongs in the hands of Hmong people, a tightknit minority originally from China who proudly cling to customs wherever they settle, from California to Minnesota, Laos and Thailand.
In Vietnam, they have been largely excluded from the economic growth of the past decade, and more than 60 percent of the country’s one million Hmong live below the poverty line. The ethnic group have long been at odds with the central government -- stemming in part from the CIA recruitment of anti-communist Laotian Hmong during the Vietnam War -- which for decades has imposed a series of resettlement, development and assimilation campaigns that have mostly failed.
“More than any other ethnic minority in Vietnam the Hmong have been marginalised by programs that purport to develop them,” writes anthropologist Ngo Tam in her 2016 book “The New Way: Protestantism and the Hmong in Vietnam.”
Dong Van, Vietnam
Vuong Duy Bao surveys his ancestral palace, a vestige of Vietnam’s marginalised Hmong ethnic minority that he says was taken from his family by local officials.
The wooden structure is laden with historic markers: opium flowers carved into pillars in a nod to the region’s once-booming trade, and an iron fence made with metal imported from former colonial ruler France.
Built in 1903 by Bao’s warlord grandfather with his opium fortune, the retired civil servant claims local authorities took possession of the property in the northern Ha Giang province from his family and are now refusing to return it.
“Hmong people all over the world acknowledge this as (our) family home... so we can’t lose it,” he told AFP from the building, which authorities run as a museum.
Both sides agree it is an architectural treasure since the historically nomadic Hmong rarely stayed long enough in one place to build anything lasting.
Bao had been living in Hanoi, but on return to the family home, he discovered local authorities had taken ownership of the palace and rejected his claim to it because he could not provide deeds. He branded the request “absurd” and said official documents did not exist when the property was built but his family’s connection to it was set out in history books about the local area and even in pictures of it displayed in the museum.
Many Hmong fear the government is simply commandeering their culture to boost tourism dollars. For Bao, his battle for repossession goes beyond the personal. He believes Hmong heritage belongs in the hands of Hmong people, a tightknit minority originally from China who proudly cling to customs wherever they settle, from California to Minnesota, Laos and Thailand.
In Vietnam, they have been largely excluded from the economic growth of the past decade, and more than 60 percent of the country’s one million Hmong live below the poverty line. The ethnic group have long been at odds with the central government -- stemming in part from the CIA recruitment of anti-communist Laotian Hmong during the Vietnam War -- which for decades has imposed a series of resettlement, development and assimilation campaigns that have mostly failed.
“More than any other ethnic minority in Vietnam the Hmong have been marginalised by programs that purport to develop them,” writes anthropologist Ngo Tam in her 2016 book “The New Way: Protestantism and the Hmong in Vietnam.”
