Little Saigon Fetes Release of Vietnamese Dissidents

Little Saigon community members Wednesday rallied around the recent release of five Vietnamese political dissidents, including a former Orange County resident and another who was imprisoned in Vietnam for publishing a pro-democracy newsletter.

“This is a major event for the Vietnamese and Vietnamese American people,” said Cong Minh Tran of Tustin and co-founder of the Human Rights Coalition Network, which focuses on human rights issues in Vietnam.

Writer and scholar Doan Viet Hoat was among the first group of political prisoners released last week under a Vietnamese government amnesty program.

On Tuesday, Hoat boarded a plane in Thailand and headed to Minnesota, where he will resettle with his family.

To mark his release, Tran, along with a group of other Vietnamese Americans from Southern California, will meet with Hoat tonight when his flight stops at the Los Angeles International Airport.

“Hoat is a hero, of sorts, to the Vietnamese and international community,” said Viet Do, a reporter with the Westminster-based Nguoi Viet, one of the largest and oldest Vietnamese-language newspapers in California.

Hoat received the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award in June. He has been praised for fighting for democracy in Vietnam. In 1990, he was arrested for his role in producing the Freedom Forum newsletter, which was critical of the Vietnamese government.

He later was sentenced to 15 years in prison on charges of attempting to overthrow the government.

But Hoat’s release, Vietnamese officials said earlier this week, was part of a general amnesty for more than 5,200 prisoners to coincide with the country’s anniversary of independence this month.

Other dissidents recently released included Buddhist monk Thich Tri Sieu of the outlawed Unified Buddhist Monk Church of Vietnam; and Nguyen Dan Que, an endocrinologist who originally was sentenced to 20 years in prison for founding the Non-Violent Movement for Human Rights in Vietnam, which advocates democratic change.

Two Vietnamese Americans, Jimmy Tran and Ly Tong, also released Tuesday, returned to their families in Northern California.

Tran was arrested in 1993 for trying to blow up a statue of Ho Chi Minh.

Tong, once a resident of Orange County, gained international attention in 1992 when he hijacked a commercial plane over Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, and tossed out 50,000 leaflets calling for the overthrow of the Communist regime.

During his imprisonment, Vietnamese Americans in Orange County organized a “Ly Tong Spirit Task Force” to gather support for him. Attorneys in Little Saigon also launched a letter-writing campaign to Washington officials, urging U.S. intervention.

Many in Westminster’s Little Saigon welcomed Vietnam’s latest announcement of amnesty.

But some expressed caution Wednesday and said the move could be a way for the Vietnamese government to gain Western alliance and investments rather than heed human rights.

“This is an act to serve their own needs,” said Tran, the Orange County human rights activist. “We will continue to demand that the Vietnamese government release all political prisoners.”