Viet Author Attacked Here Goes Home to Paris to Mend

Novelist Long Vu, a well-known Vietnamese author who suffered partial paralysis after a severe beating in Orange County’s Little Saigon, has quietly left the United States and returned to his home in France.

“He is undergoing rehabilitation in a hospital in Paris,” Vu’s son-in-law, David McAree, said Wednesday in an telephone interview from Paris where McAree also lives. “He’s conscious, but he has problems with amnesia and aphasia (a partial loss of ability to speak and understand words) and his right arm is paralyzed.”

The 54-year-old Vu, who was in a coma for five days, left a Westminster hospital in early June, in part because his family said they feared for his life. They said they had received word from the FBI that a right-wing terrorist organization, the Vietnamese Party to Exterminate the Communists and Restore the Nation, may have been behind Vu’s beating. It involved several men who attacked Vu with their fists in Garden Grove on April 30, the 13th anniversary of the fall of Saigon.

Vu, author of more than 20 books, had also written columns highly critical of both the South Vietnamese and present Communist governments in Vietnam.

“We were all terrified (for Vu’s safety) at the time he was in the hospital,” McAree said. “It was too dangerous for us to speak out about the attack then. But we’re trying to give our side now.”

James Neilson, an FBI spokesman in Los Angeles, would not say whether the FBI believes that the anti-Communist organization is linked to the beating or has claimed responsibility for the attack.

“I can’t confirm or deny anything about that. It’s because of Department of Justice rules,” Neilson said.

Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), who had invited Vu to lecture in the United States, had asked the FBI to enter the investigation, according to Brian Bennett, Dornan’s chief of staff.

The anti-Communist group has claimed credit for several acts of violence in Vietnamese communities in other parts of the United States since 1980. Those reports prompted police in Garden Grove to solicit the FBI’s help in investigating the death last year of a Garden Grove Vietnamese publisher.

Tap Van Pham, publisher of Mai magazine, a Vietnamese entertainment publication, died Aug. 9, 1987, in a fire at his office that police said was arson. No suspects have been arrested.

In October, the FBI, as a result of Pham’s death, began an investigation into political violence in U.S. Vietnamese exile communities.

No suspects have been arrested for Vu’s beating, which occurred when he was attacked by several men as he and two friends walked to a car about 1:10 p.m. after having a late breakfast at the Bolsa Mini Mall in Garden Grove.

Garden Grove Police Sgt. Philip Mason said police have “no knowledge” of any claims of responsibility by the anti-Communist group regarding the attack on Vu.

“We have heard a lot of rumors, but all we know is that two or more guys just jumped out from the crowd and starting hitting Mr. Vu and he apparently struck his head on the pavement,” Mason said.

At the time of the attack, about 100 people had gathered for an anti-Communist demonstration at the mall to recognize the anniversary of Saigon’s fall, Mason said.

During the attack, no verbal threats were issued; the attackers fled on foot, Mason said.

McAree said the attack was very quick. Vu and his companions have described it as a “karate or kung fu” attack.

Vu can recall the attack, McAree said, but does not wish to discuss it. He is conscious, but because of a blow to the head--either by an attacker or a fall to the pavement--he has difficulty with his speech. And the writer, who once spoke French, Vietnamese and English, cannot remember how to speak French and English.

“Doctors believe he can recover his full speech and his memory, but he won’t be able to use his right arm, which is permanently paralyzed,” McAree said.

Vu will remain in a Paris hospital for several more weeks, McAree said. Then he has “to be re-educated” to regain his memory and full speech ability, which could take years.

One of Vu’s companions photographed a fleeing assailant, Mason said, but police have been unable to identify the person despite claims by the companions that they had seen one of the attackers previously at the mall.

As a writer whose books and satirical columns brought both fame and enemies, Vu may have been targeted for violence by right-wing extremists who believe that after the fall of Saigon, he helped the Communists during his imprisonment in a re-education camp, according to sources in the Southeast Asian community in Orange County.

Vu was arrested and imprisoned after the Communists took over South Vietnam in 1975. He was released six years later, after pressure from Amnesty International and PEN International.

Dornan last summer invited Vu to visit Orange County as a lecturer and had helped him obtain a visa, Bennett said, adding:

“He is a famous writer, and we encouraged him to come to the United States. We knew he was critical of the past and current governments in Vietnam, but we just thought of him as an intellectual.”

During one talk in San Jose last fall, Vu was subjected to verbal abuse by a group of right-wing extremists, who criticized him for his alleged prison betrayal, according to a Vietnamese source who did not wish to be identified.

“The (extremists) said that they had a witness who had been in the same camp with Vu who told the audience that Vu had somehow caused the starvation death of another prisoner, also a writer. The claim was that Vu could have helped the prisoner and prevented his death,” the source said.

McAree rejected the accusations as an attempt by right-wing activists to legitimize the attack when “they had no proof or evidence that his behavior in prison led to anyone’s death.”

“These people are trying to pass it off as a personal attack motivated by my father-in-law’s behavior in a re-education camp.”

“But while he was in the camp, he was an outsider. His writing criticized everyone, both right and left. His only enemy was corruption and power,” McAree said, adding that Vu, at great risk, wrote poems during his imprisonment.

During his speeches in this country, Vu, who as a novelist often focused on Vietnamese youth, would challenge young members of the audience to visit Vietnam “to see how the truth really was,” McAree said. “Sometimes he would tell them not to believe what the anti-Communists were saying, but to seek the truth for their own selves.”

For example, on the subject of refugee immigration, McAree said, Vu would advise young people that the “solution is in Vietnam and they have to go back to Vietnam as tourists to see how living conditions are.”

“He always pointed these remarks at the young people, those who were not branded by the war,” McAree said. “He saw it as their chance to see the problem and hopefully arrive at a solution from a fresh vantage point.”

Vu has written about 20 novels under the pen name of Duyen Anh and satirical columns under the name of Thuong Sinh. Vu’s latest book, “Nha Tu,” or “The Prison,” which was published last year in the United States, details his ill treatment in prison.

Vu is married and has a wife, a son and daughter living in France.