VIETNAM: O.C. congresswoman praises them for 'fighting the fight' for democracy.
November 19, 2000
By JOHN GITTELSOHN
The Orange County Register
HANOI -- U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Santa Ana, left her hotel around dawn Saturday without the usual escort of U.S. Embassy officials or Secret Service agents.
The Orange County congresswoman, visiting Vietnam with President Clinton, headed for a meeting with some of Vietnam's most prominent and isolated dissidents. The meeting was arranged with the help of Vietnamese-American human-rights activists in Orange County who worked through a string of contacts to avoid police interference.
"The embassy didn't want to send anyone because this is during a presidential visit and they didn't want to be involved," Sanchez said.
The four dissidents represent an unusual threat to Vietnam's one-party state because they are fathers of the revolution, military officers and intellectuals who turned against the establishment.
"I'm honored I was able to serve my country since 1940," said Hoang Minh Chinh, a former soldier and director of Vietnam's Marxist-Leninist Institute. "But I'm even more honored to have been put in prison by the same government I worked for. I am fighting for democracy for Vietnam."
Sanchez spent more than an hour discussing free trade, freedom of the press, democracy and other politically sensitive subjects with:
Chinh, 78, who was imprisoned or confined to house arrest for a total of 20 years because of his calls for democracy.
Tran Do, 77, a retired lieutenant general and ex-head of the Communist Party's Cultural and Ideology Committee, who was expelled from the party in 1999 after publishing a letter demanding reforms.
Pham Que Dong, 70, a former People's Army colonel, military historian and editor of state-run newspapers who quit the Communist Party in 1999 to protest Tran Do's expulsion.
Nguyen Thanh Giang, 64, an internationally recognized geophysicist who was jailed in 1998 for his anti-government writing.
She hopes to meet with more dissidents when she travels to Ho Chi Minh City today.
The four Hanoi dissidents had never been in the same room together. Two other invitees -- mathematician Phan Dinh Dieu and author Hoang Tien -- could not attend for unexplained reasons.
The dissidents told Sanchez they live with constant phone taps, police surveillance, harassment and physical threats.
"You are all very, very brave and courageous to fight the fight," Sanchez said. "And people at home (in Orange County) want you to know you must keep fighting."
They wished that President Clinton had said more in his televised speech to pressure the Vietnamese government, which controls all publishing and broadcast media, to allow freedom of the press.
They gave cautious support to ratification of a U.S.-Vietnam trade agreement because they said "corrupt officials" had opposed it. They hoped the trade agreement would use economic freedom as a wedge for other freedoms, but they also worried that free enterprise could subject Vietnam to exploitation by American corporate interests.
"We want to have the bilateral trade agreement in effect," said Tran Do, who suffers diabetes and left his sick bed to attend the meeting. "But we don't want it in a way that seems like Americans are coming to take over."