By LOU MARANO
WASHINGTON, April 22 (UPI) - Breaching a government-imposed wall of silence, a leading Vietnamese dissident predicted to United Press International that democracy would come soon to his country.
The main tension now is between the communist Politburo and the Vietnamese people, Nguyen Dan Que said Saturday in a phone interview from Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). Marxist-Leninist doctrine has been unable to solve basic problems such as the shortage of food, clothing, housing and health care, he said.
The people's reaction to "the ill-thinking of the Politburo" is a part of the process of Vietnam's "self-liberation," he explained. "The dictatorship is decreasing progressively," he said, "while the people's strength is going up. The point at which they meet is D-Day."
The party is divided, Nguyen Dan Que said, and many of its members no longer believe in communist doctrine. "We are working on a peaceful transition," he said. "We hope moderates on both sides will emerge to play a vital role."
Nguyen Dan Que, a physician, could have left Vietnam after the communist victory in 1975 but chose instead to stay to provide medical care to the poor. Since then he has spent almost 15 years in prison, much of that in solitary confinement, because of his advocacy of democracy and human rights.
Recent attempts by journalists to reach Nguyen Dan Que, who lives under house arrest, have been futile. On April 12, French reporter Sylvaine Pasquier was arrested outside his door in attempt to visit him. Pasquier, who works for the weekly L'Express, was held in jail for a day before being deported.
During that time, she was interrogated relentlessly and deprived of sleep, said Matthieu Firmin, an Asia specialist at Reporters Without Borders. In a phone interview from Paris, Firmin told UPI that Pasquier was not allowed to call the French Embassy. Police planted heroin in Pasquier's bag, and then put a gun to her head and threatened to kill her, Firmin said. While Pasquier was in jail, the authorities ransacked her hotel room and found a list of pro-democratic dissidents. This has caused her great concern, Firmin said.
The Vietnamese Embassy in Washington said Pasquier's infraction was misrepresenting herself as a computer worker in her application for a tourist visa. But the Hanoi government usually forces journalists to accept an official "translator," before whom people are unlikely to speak freely.
Earlier in April, French reporter Arnaud Dubois -- who also traveled to Vietnam on a tourist visa -- was detained and expelled. His notes and papers were confiscated at the airport, Dubois told Radio Free Asia.
Hundreds of foreign journalists have flocked to Ho Chi Minh City for the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, which marked North Vietnam's victory in its war against South Vietnam. Many similar retrospectives are being held in the United States, where the role of America's alliance with South Vietnam has been questioned for more than 30 years.
Prominent Americans and some U.S. veterans have planned trips to Vietnam during this anniversary year. Nguyen Dan Que's brother, a physician who lives in Falls Church, Va., hopes that the visitors bring no hint of remorse. "There is no reason to apologize," said Quan Nguyen. "The fact that 2 million people have fled should attest to that. During 4,000 years of Vietnamese history, amid many wars and catastrophes, no flood of refugees has been generated."
The father of the Nguyen brothers was a leader of the anti-French Nationalist Party. In order to have no rivals within the anti-colonialist resistance, Ho Chi Minh ordered the liquidation of Nationalist Party members in the fall of 1946, Quan Nguyen said. On Oct. 11, 1946, some 200 nationalists were killed in Hanoi and their bodies thrown into Ha Le Lake. The Nguyens' father's body was not among the 200 and was never recovered, Quan Nguyen said.