Ex-Viet Prisoners on Way to Rejoin Families in U.S.

While American relatives anxiously awaited word, 300 former Vietnamese political prisoners arrived here today on the first leg of a journey that will take more than half of them to California.

The emigres, including former South Vietnamese military officers and government officials who spent years in “re-education” camps, are the first political detainees to leave with their families under an accord reached between Washington and Hanoi last July after seven years of negotiations.

“We’re all very happy. It’s been long overdue and we’ve been waiting a long time to get this chance to travel to the United States,” said Nguyen Van So, a former captain in the South Vietnamese Army.

Nguyen, who is traveling with his wife and two teen-age children, has a brother-in-law in Arleta, Calif.

“We won’t forget those of us who are still behind in Vietnam,” said Nguyen, who received a master’s degree from UCLA in 1973.

After the Communist victory in Vietnam in 1975, he was sent to a re-education camp for six years. Tens of thousands of former South Vietnamese military personnel and civil servants were sent to such camps for manual labor and political indoctrination by the Communist government because of their close association with the old regime in Saigon.

The former detainees, accompanied by members of their immediate families, arrived in Bangkok from Ho Chi Minh City--the former Saigon--aboard chartered Air Vietnam jets. They will spend about a week in the Thai capital undergoing medical testing and administrative processing before being put aboard commercial flights to the United States.

U.S. officials said there was no clear idea how many might qualify under the refugee program, but the figure could be as high as 100,000. One official said he expected the number of former re-education camp prisoners leaving Vietnam to reach about 1,000 a month in the near future.

Refugee resettlement officials in Southern California confirmed that at least 70 people in today’s group were headed for Los Angeles County and at least 63 are planning to join relatives who have settled in Orange County.

Ho Van Phuoc, a former South Vietnamese air force lieutenant who was on a Friday flight from Ho Chi Minh City, is joining a sister in Whittier. He said the situation in Vietnam was “still very bad. There is no work.”

He spent seven years in a re-education camp and then said he struggled to survive as a tailor in Ho Chi Minh City.

“I think we have a better opportunity in America,” he said.

Meanwhile, in Southern California, friends and relatives anxiously looked forward to long-awaited reunions.

“The day is finally here when I will see my brother again after more than 14 years,” said Kim-Nhung Tran, 47, who runs a dressmaking shop in Westminster. Her brother spent eight years in prison camps in northern Vietnam.

Quang-Hoi Tran, 43, a former army colonel, his wife and his two children were expected to be aboard the first Air Vietnam flight, his sister said.

She said her husband, son and a second brother drowned in an escape attempt from Vietnam in 1980. Undaunted, she fled by boat five months later, landed in a Thai refugee camp, and later settled in Orange County.

But a third brother, who also spent seven years in prison camps, is still in Ho Chi Minh City hoping to be one of the next to depart, she said.

Linda Lien Dao, 65, who works for the Los Angeles County Department of Social Services, said her youngest brother, Hung Anh Dao, 48, once an army major, his wife and three children are expected to arrive at Los Angeles airport soon.

He was captured one week after the fall of Saigon and imprisoned near Ho Chi Minh City until 1980, she said.

“During the first two years in prison, they beat him all the time,” said Dao, who communicated with her brother by mail over the years.

“After three years in prison, his wife was allowed to visit him,” she said.

After his release in 1980, Dao said, “he could not have a job and he dared not go outside because people watched him. His wife supported the family with a black market business selling everything, like medication and clothes,” she said.

Dao, who has been trying to get her brother out of Vietnam for 10 years, said her mother “dreamed of coming to the United States with her son. Unfortunately, she died in 1986.”

“He finished four years of college in French and is very good in mathematics,” she said. “Maybe he can learn a job in computers.”

Last July, the United States and Vietnam reached agreement to allow former political prisoners who served “substantial” periods in re-education camps to leave for resettlement in the United States.

In the past, small numbers of former re-education camp inmates have been allowed to leave Vietnam, but for reasons other than their status as political prisoners.

The July agreement, negotiated by Robert L. Funseth, a senior deputy assistant secretary of state, provided for the resettlement of the former political prisoners and their close families.

The resettlement comes in addition to the estimated 3,000 Vietnamese who leave for the United States each month under the Orderly Departure Program, which is designed to facilitate the resettlement of people who were connected with the South Vietnamese government and their families.

Resettlement officials have said new arrivals tend to be highly educated and skilled, and will be better able to make their way in America than the average refugee.

But they have expressed concern that federal money for refugee services, already in short supply because of the influx of “boat people,” will not be sufficient to deal with emotional and medical scars of the former prisoners.

Some in the Vietnamese emigre community in the U.S. worried that if the former prisoners are too outspoken about their experiences in Vietnam’s prisons, they may jeopardize the release of those still hoping to get out.

Vietnam has made sporadic attempts at liberalization. In December, however, police arrested about 10,000 people in what the government said was an anti-crime campaign, but which dissidents branded a political crackdown, said Nguyen Manh Hung, director of the Indochina Institute at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.

Thu D. Duong, a former colonel and political detainee who joined his family in San Clemente a month ago, said that 522 former military officers who had been released from re-education camps were among those re-arrested in the crackdown. But U.S. officials could not confirm that report.

He expressed fears that any further political instability--internal or external--could jeopardize future releases in spite of the July accord.

“We have waited for so long, and our situation is becoming more dangerous,” said Duong, 59, who spent five years in the camps and was re-arrested three times for trying to flee. “Because of the positions we held in the former regime, we are the first ones to be persecuted if there are any changes in the present political system.”

Wallace reported from Bangkok and Efron from Orange County. Times staff writers Louis Sahagun in Los Angeles and Thuan Le in Orange County also contributed to this report.