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VIETNAM <br />iO <br />The government continued to address the causes of ethnic minority discontent <br />through special programs to improve education and health facilities and expand <br />road access and electrification of rural communities and villages. The government <br />continued to allocate land to ethnic minorities in the Central Highlands through a <br />special program, but there were valid complaints that implementation was uneven. <br />The government maintained a program to conduct classes in some local ethnic <br />minority languages in elementary and secondary schools. The government also <br />worked with local officials to develop local language curricula, but it appeared to <br />implement this program more comprehensively in the Central Highlands and the <br />Mekong Delta, and only in limited areas of the Northwest Highlands. The law <br />provides for universal education for children regardless of religion or ethnicity, and <br />ethnic minorities are not required to pay regular school fees. The government <br />operated special schools for ethnic minority children, and there were 223 boarding <br />schools for them in the Northwest and Central Highlands and the Mekong Delta, <br />including at middle- and high- school levels plus special admission and preparatory <br />programs as well as scholarships and preferential admissions at the university <br />level. There were also a few government- subsidized technical and vocational <br />schools for ethnic minorities. Nonetheless, there were some credible cases of <br />discrimination against ethnic minorities. <br />The government broadcast radio and television programs in ethnic minority <br />languages in some areas. The government also instructed ethnic - majority (Kink) <br />officials to learn the language of the locality in which they worked. Provincial <br />governments continued initiatives designed to increase employment, reduce the <br />income gap between ethnic minorities and ethnic Kinh, and make officials <br />sensitive and receptive to ethnic minority culture and traditions. Nonetheless, local <br />security officials detained Tang Thuy, an ethnic Khmer Krom minority group <br />member from Soc Trang Province, for two days in March for questioning about his <br />participation in a meeting that called for the government to respect the rights of all <br />ethnic minorities. <br />The government granted preferential treatment to domestic and foreign companies <br />that invested in highland areas populated predominantly by ethnic minorities. The <br />government also maintained infrastructure development programs that targeted <br />poor, largely ethnic - minority areas and established agricultural extension programs <br />for remote rural areas. <br />The National Assembly's Ethnic Minority Council, along with provincial Ethnic <br />Minority Steering Committees, supported infrastructure development and <br />