Hmong

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The Hmong ( Vietnamese Mẹo ) are an indigenous people of East and Southeast Asia . They live mainly in the forested mountain areas of southern China ( Guizhou , Sichuan , Yunnan provinces and the Guangxi Autonomous Region ), in Laos , Vietnam and Thailand . In China they are assigned to the overarching Miao nationality, which has over 15 million people.

Laos : Marriage-capable Hmong women in Phonsavan at the traditional ball game with potential husbands.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the CIA recruited Hmong troops in Laos for a secret war in order to use them against the procommunist Pathet Lao and later against the troops of the North Vietnamese People's Army and the South Vietnamese FNL ("Vietcong"). When the Pathet Lao took over the government in Laos, thousands of Hmong fled to the United States and Thailand, where they sought political asylum. In 2004 the US embarked on a resettlement project that would move most of the stateless refugees to the US within two years, mostly to Fresno and Merced, California and St. Paul, Minnesota.

history

root

The history of the Hmong is mainly derived from oral traditions, i.e. H. mainly derived from myths and legends. In addition, there have been abundant written records of the Hmong in Chinese chronicles and history books for about 2000 years. Own written records have only existed since the 17th century, when European missionaries started their work in China. The ethnic roots of the Hmong probably go back 4000 years and are located in central China.

A light-haired Hmong man

The main advocated view is that the Hmong originated in the Yellow River area of China. They lived there, at some distance, with the Han Chinese. Linguistic findings suggest their origin in south-central China.

Some scientists used to believe that they originally migrated from western Mongolia to the Yellow Sea and the Huang He catchment area . The light hair color of some Hmong, which among East Asian people only occurs in some Kazakhs and some Siberian peoples and could indicate some other genetic influence, was seen as evidence for this refuted theory . However, since there is largely no genetic link between Central Asians and Hmong, it is probably an independently generated genetic mutation, similar to the occurrence of blonde or brown hair in Filipinos, Indonesians and Melanesian peoples of Papua New Guinea. Genetically, the Hmong are almost identical to other peoples of East and Southeast Asia.

It is also said that they settled with the Han Chinese in these places and that both ethnic groups later coexisted with each other for several millennia. While the Han Chinese established an expanding agricultural state, the Hmong (Miao) were pushed further south and into the mountain areas by the rapidly growing Han Chinese population. So they became an ethnic minority of China. Especially during the Manchurian Qing dynasty (1644-1911) there were repeated uprisings of the Miao, which were bloodily suppressed. It was only with the establishment of the People's Republic of China that the Miao achieved an equal position in Chinese society.

Today the Hmong are one of the most dispersed people in the world. They live mainly in China, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. But they also emigrated to the USA, Canada, Australia and Europe.

Black Hmong in Sa Pa (North Vietnam)

Depending on which territory one refers to, the names "Hmung", "Hmu", "Meo" or "Meau" serve as a synonym for "Miao" and "Hmong". Many Hmong outside of China prefer variants of "Hmong" as their own name. Some believe that “Miao” means “barbarian” in Chinese. In fact, before the founding of the People's Republic of China, "Miao" was a collective name for various peoples of southern China, including many ethnic groups that do not belong to the Miao. Miaozu ( 苗族 ), meaning “Miao people”, has nothing to do with the Chinese terms for barbarians and in no way disparages the Miao. For this reason, the Miao of China are not known to be dissatisfied with their name. From the point of view of many Hmong outside of China, Hmong means "free people", which expresses their desire for a life in freedom. The actual meaning of the word is unclear, however.

There are 70–80 different groups known around the world, which differ mainly in their clothes or their color.

Indochina Wars (1946-1975)

Even the returning French colonial rulers began to recruit groups of mercenaries under the Hmong. This was operated by a secret service unit GCMA , anglicized "MACG", founded especially for this purpose . At the time of the Indochina Conference , 40,000 local armed men were under the command of around 400 French officers. The action, expressly approved by General Raoul Salan , was financed by the sale of the opium grown by the Hmong, which was initially transported away by the French Air Force under the strictest secrecy ( Operation X ) .

"Secret War" is the name given to fighting in the Kingdom of Laos during the American-led Vietnam War. At that time, Laos was declared neutral, which was ensured by several agreements with the United States. As a result, it was not possible for American forces to openly participate in the fighting when troops from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam began operations in Laos. As a result, the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) also began operating in the area without the public's knowledge. This served to evade public criticism and officially to maintain the neutrality of Laos. Hence this war got the name "Secret War". The local potentates continued to rely on illegal opium exports for financing; private charter airlines, collectively known as Air Opium , were now used for transportation .

In 1961, the CIA trained around 9,000 Hmong, led by General Vang Pao, to become guerrilla fighters against the procommunist Pathet Lao and the troops of northern Vietnam intervening in Laos, as they were familiar with the territory.

When the fighting threatened to spiral out of control in 1963, Vang Pao's secret army recruited another 20,000 Hmong. At its height, Vang Pao's rebel force was 30,000 men. In 1964, the Hmong took part in an air war, which was only possible with the support of the CIA. The losses of the Hmong troops in Vietnam are ten times higher than that of the American troops. This is due to the fact that Hmong soldiers were repeatedly sacrificed to rescue American soldiers who had crashed in airplanes.

The fighting was extremely costly for the Hmong rebels, who were inferior in terms of personnel and technology, and around 35,000 fighters were killed. Vang Pao increasingly tried to fill the gaps with child soldiers . In 1968 the North Laos program director of the US development aid organization USAID estimated that 30% of Vang Pao's fighters were 14 years of age or younger (some even 10), 30% 15 or 16 and 30% older than 35 years. The men in the intermediate age group are "all dead". As a result, there were almost no men of marriageable age who could start families or work the rice fields. The Hmong villages were therefore very dependent on American food aid, which in turn was administered by Vang Pao. He was able to put pressure on villages so that they would be cut off from supplies of food if they refused to provide their young sons for his troops. Vang Pao was also able to mark villages that opposed his demands to the US armed forces as Pathet Lao villages, thus exposing them to American bombing attacks.

According to various estimates, between 10% and half of the 300 to 400 thousand Laotian Hmong previously (1960) died during the war and the acts of revenge against the ethnic group after the victory of the Communists, whose members were stamped as helpers of the Americans. In addition to the fighters of the secret army, the dead also included numerous civilians who fell victim to artillery and bomb attacks as well as land mines, who were massacred after the end of the war, who died of disease or hunger caused by the war. Whether Soviet chemical weapons (so-called " yellow rain " - " Yellow Rain ") were used against the Hmong, as US Secretary of State Alexander Haig in 1981 claimed is debatable.

Thousands of Hmong fled to the USA after the end of the Lao Civil War, where they settled mainly in the states of Minnesota (namely in the Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul area ) and in California's Long Valley , for example in the Sacramento and Fresno area . In the 2010 US census, 260,073 people gave Hmong ethnic backgrounds. The life of the Hmong Americans is the theme of Clint Eastwood's 2008 film Gran Torino , among others . About 2000 Hmong also live in French Guiana as a result of resettlement .

At the end of 2009, amid fierce international protests, Thailand began repatriating over 4,000 exiled Hmong from the Huay Nam Khao refugee camp in Phetchabun Province to Laos. This is particularly critical, as the Hmong are considered "America's forgotten warriors" in their homeland and are persecuted by the military of the People's Republic of Laos. The USA in particular protested against the deportation, but refused to accept refugees themselves. The Hmong conflict in Laos continues to this day.

Settlement area

Members of the Hmong in Northern Laos

The Miao live as an officially recognized "nationality" in the People's Republic of China. Their number there is well over nine million. See main article: Miao .

The settlement areas of the Hmong in Asia are:

  • China : The members of this ethnic group living in China are regarded there as part of the larger Miao nationality, to which 9,426,000 million people belong (2010 census), about a third of them can be regarded as Hmong (mainly in the provinces of Guizhou , Sichuan , Guangxi and Yunnan );
  • Vietnam : 1,068,189 people (2009 census);
  • Laos : 450,000 (2005);
  • Thailand : 150,000;
  • Myanmar : exact number unknown, but significantly less than in Thailand.

Around five percent of the Hmong live outside of Asia, mainly as a result of flight and displacement from Laos after the end of the civil war:

Culture

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

“ Having a family means being happy. To have none means to be lost. "

Mother with children
Festively dressed child
Chinese Miao
Sister festival

This Hmong proverb illustrates the role of family and family life in Hmong culture. Social and family cohesion are the most important things in Hmong culture and are therefore of much greater importance than in Western cultures. That is also the reason why every Hmong belongs to a tribe . The tribe is an amalgamation of several families who are supposed to ensure that social bonds, security, well-being and, last but not least, positions of power within the group are consolidated. Membership in a tribe is determined at birth. Only female Hmong can change membership of a tribe by marrying.

Weddings between members of the same tribe are not common, probably also to prevent inbreeding . As a rule, a man marries as many women as he can support. Tribal members refer to each other as siblings . If a member needs help, this will be provided by his tribe, even if there is no personal relationship between those affected.

The family is the most important institution in Hmong life. The responsibility and authority of individual family members are age-dependent. The older a person is, the more authority they have. Decisions of the family elders are therefore - in contrast to decisions of other tribesmen - always accepted and not questioned. Part of this system is that every older child is responsible for the next younger within the family. Ultimately, with this type of division of responsibilities, the oldest child is responsible for all younger children in front of their parents. In a social context, parents therefore have less individual responsibility for their children than in other human systems of order.

Each family member has a special role to play. This also applies to the elders, because they are valued for their great life experience. Advice is therefore mostly sought from the grandparents. These and the other elders also help raise children.

Traditionally, the men and their eldest children are responsible for procuring food. To do this, they either go hunting or farm. Besides sewing work, the women have to take care of any animals that may be present. Furthermore, they must do all the work that is assigned to them by their husbands or close relatives.

Correct performance of the funeral ceremony, which lasts several days, is of the greatest importance for the soul to survive in the hereafter. Here, a player of the mouth organ Qeej sends music-transmitted linguistic messages to the soul of the deceased. The musical tradition of the Qeej is preserved as an identity-creating cultural asset even in the diaspora.

language

The languages ​​of the Hmong belong to the language group of the Hmong-Mien languages (Miao-Yao languages). There are several written languages.

Chinese scientists are among the Miao-Yao languages usually for language family of the Sino-Tibetan languages , see Western linguists the Miao-Yao languages but as a distinct language group.

literature

Web links

Commons : Hmong  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Hmong  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lemoine, Jacques (2005). "What is the actual number of (H) mong in the world?" (PDF). Hmong Studies Journal . 6 .
  2. ↑ America's Secret War in Laos - The CIA's Largest Military Operation. Documentary by Marc Eberle, 2008.
  3. ↑ Sven Hansen: Arte documentary America's secret war in Laos. The largest military operation by the CIA. In: taz.de , February 16, 2010.
  4. ↑ Anthony W. Tatman: Hmong History, Culture, and Acculturation: Implications for Counseling the Hmong . In: Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development . tape 32 , no. 4 , October 2004, ISSN  0883-8534 , p. 222-233 , doi : 10.1002 / j.2161-1912.2004.tb00629.x .
  5. ↑ Ratliff, Martha. "Vocabulary of Environment and Subsistence in Proto-language," p. 160.
  6. ^ The Hmong: Part 2 Hmong in Laos - Bloody Trails to Uncertain Freedom ( Memento from December 22, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) April 1, 2007.
  7. ↑ Bo Wen, Hui Li, Song Gao, Xianyun Mao, Yang Gao: Genetic Structure of Hmong-Mien Speaking Populations in East Asia as Revealed by mtDNA Lineages . In: Molecular Biology and Evolution . tape 22 , no. 3 , March 1, 2005, ISSN  0737-4038 , p. 725-734 , doi : 10.1093 / molbev / msi055 ( oup.com [accessed August 16, 2018]).
  8. ^ Rice: Hmong Women and Reproduction. 2000, p. 4.
  9. ^ Nicholas Tapp: Miao. In: Encyclopaedia Britannica Online , 2015.
  10. ^ McCoy, Alfred: The Politics of Heroin. New York 1991 (rev. Ed .; orig. 1972); ISBN 1-55652-126-X , many digits
  11. ↑ ( Memento of the original from December 20, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. April 6, 2007. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.cia.gov
  12. ^ McCoy, Alfred (1991), p. 134.
  13. ↑ Jeff Lindsay: Why Are the Hmong in America? In: FutureHmong Magazine , June 2002, pp. 14-15.
  14. ↑ secret-war.foosquare.com/ April 9, 2007.
  15. ^ John Prados, Safe for Democracy. The Secret Wars of the CIA. Ivan R. Dee, Chicago 2006, pp. 356-357.
  16. ^ Edgar "Pop" Buell, 1968. Quoted from: Anne Fadiman: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York 1997, p. 132.
  17. ^ Hugh DS Greenway: The pendulum of war swings against. In: Life , Vol. 68, No. 12, April 3, 1970, pp. 32-36, here p. 36.
  18. ↑ Kenton Clymer: Cambodia and Laos in the Vietnam War. In: The Columbia History of the Vietnam War. Columbia University Press, New York 2011, pp. 357-381, here p. 363.
  19. ^ Arnold R. Isaacs: Without Honor. Defeat in Vietnam and Cambodia. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimor 1983, p. 167.
  20. ↑ Fadiman: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. 1997, pp. 132-133.
  21. ↑ Elizabeth M. Hoeffel, Sonya Rastogi, Myoung Ouk Kim, Hasan Shahid: The Asian Population: 2010 In: 2010 Census Briefs, United States Census Bureau, March 2012.
  22. ↑ a b Sven Barske: Market Day in Cacao - An "Asian" village in French Guiana (South America). Deutschlandfunk, January 13, 2013.
  23. ↑ America's forgotten warriors must go. ( Memento from December 31, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Tagesschau.de, December 28, 2009
  24. ^ Jacques Lemoine: What is the actual number of the (H) mong in the world? In: Hmong Studies Journal , Volume 6, 2005, pp. 1-8. Quoted in Nicholas Tapp: Miao. In: Encyclopædia Britannica Online , 2015.
  25. ↑ a b c d e Grit Grigoleit: Global Diaspora of the Hmong. ( Memento of the original from November 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.seas.at archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: ASEAS - Austrian Journal for Southeast Asian Studies, Volume 1, No. 1, 2008, pp. 65–78, here p. 66.
  26. ^ Tou T. Yang: Hmong of Germany. Preliminary Report on the Resettlement of Lao Hmong Refugees in Germany. In: Hmong Studies Journal , Volume 1, 2003, pp. 1-14.