O.C. Vietnamese Risk Detainment in Homeland

A Santa Ana pastor was jailed for three weeks, accused of smuggling Bibles into Ho Chi Minh City. A Costa Mesa social activist was detained for 53 days when he brought medical supplies to Vietnam. And a Garden Grove man remains imprisoned for participating in a pro-democracy conference that officials deemed subversive.

They are among many Vietnamese Americans who returned to Vietnam in the past four years to help rebuild their homeland but, despite their U.S. citizenship, faced arrest and intimidation for alleged subversive activity.

U.S. officials report at least 12 Vietnamese Americans--five from Southern California--remain jailed in Vietnam, but the number is believed to be higher because many cases go unreported.

With the normalization this month of U.S.-Vietnam relations, some are optimistic that those who visit Vietnam will escape harassment and that those detained will be released.

But others are not convinced the Vietnamese government will relent. And U.S. officials are wary.

“Diplomatic relations may help us raise a case with the Vietnamese government,” said Nyda Budig, a spokeswoman for the State Department. “But when a person is held within a country for whatever charges, they have to go through that country’s laws.”

Vietnamese ambassador Bang Van Le said in an interview that in Vietnam, anti-government propaganda and associations are classified as criminal.

“If you are from an outside country, you should not go to Vietnam and organize a political party,” Le said. “Some come back and try to organize conferences to undermine the regime. That is against the law.”

Le declined to comment on the 12 Vietnamese Americans still detained in Vietnam, but asserted “they have violated our laws and must serve the punishment.”

The State Department would release little information on the cases, saying the detainees’ families had not consented.

Vietnam, which continues to widen its doors to a market economy, is at a crossroads between capitalism and Communism, a paradox that is breeding angst within the Vietnamese government, said Dinah ProKempner, a consultant with Asia Watch, a Washington-based human rights group.

“Although the Vietnamese government is inviting countries like the U.S. to its doorstep,” ProKempner said, “it’s also clamping down on its policies to maintain some kind of control over the uncertainty and complexities that come with the lifting of a trade embargo and normalization.”

Uncertainty plagues Liem Tran’s fate.

The 45-year-old Santa Ana resident remains in a Ho Chi Minh City prison while his sister and 16-year-old son in Orange County await his release.

Vietnamese officials contend that Tran attempted to usurp the government.

His sister, Nguyet Tran, said he flew to Vietnam in the summer of 1993 to help prepare a pro-democracy conference with the International Committee for Free Vietnam, a human rights group with chapters in Vietnamese communities worldwide, including one in Santa Ana.

Nguyet Tran has written to U.S. congressional offices and the State Department pleading for her brother’s release. U.S. officials have written vague replies:

“Human rights have been a key component in our discussions with the Vietnamese,” wrote a State Department official last year, “although the absence of diplomatic relations has constrained our ability to discuss and investigate the full range of human rights issues.”

Nguyet Tran said her mother in Vietnam and U.S. officials are allowed to visit her brother twice a month. The news is usually sparse--Tran is healthy and has legal assistance.

But since his arrest Nov. 13, 1993, Tran has yet to be tried, his sister said.

“We keep asking Vietnamese officials why specifically he was arrested,” Nguyet Tran said. “They keep passing us around from one official to another.”

Nguyet Tran can only speculate that normalization may usher some kind of protection for Vietnamese Americans like her brother. But she notes that other Communist countries that have diplomatic ties with the United States, such as China, continue to be at the center of human rights protestations.

“Liem’s been in jail for almost two years and there’s been no progress with his case,” she added. “That’s the jungle rule of Communism.”

While he would not comment specifically on Tran’s case, ambassador Le explained that Vietnam is undergoing doi moi, or renovation. Although the government is loosening its control, he said, impositions from Vietnamese expatriates cannot be tolerated.

“Reform comes with the stability of the economy and society,” Le said. “We don’t want the kind of reform where everything is turned upside down, and no laws prevail. That would only result in chaos.”

He said he believes that Vietnam has made some positive strides in offering people more freedom.

“The role of government and of enterprises are more independent,” Le said. “The media are more lively now. Reporters are more critical. With religion, the young are able to go to church. The Buddhists have their festivals every month.”

The Rev. Tuan Phuc Ma, however, disagreed that the government is more tolerant of religion. Vietnamese officials, he said, have yet to reply to his two requests for a visa made in the summer of 1994.

Ma, 60, a pastor at the Vietnamese Christian Church in Santa Ana, said he believes Vietnamese officials have not responded because he was jailed in 1991 for carrying a Bible into the country.

Vietnamese officials accused him of violating religious law because he did not get government approval to bring in a Bible, Ma said.

Police threw him in jail for three weeks, recalled the frail, 5-foot-2 man, seated in his Westminster living room.

In the mornings, officials probed the purpose of his visit; by night he and 11 others--political prisoners----slept on a cold cement floor.

But Ma nevertheless would like to return to Vietnam to educate people about Christianity.

“When there’s a U.S. embassy I will apply for a visa again, but granting the visa is up to the Vietnamese government,” he said with a shrug.

For others who have been detained or harassed in Vietnam political change has come too slowly.

Bang Cong Nguyen of Costa Mesa said he’s a testament to the political paranoia in Vietnam. He said he was not surprised when police detained him for 53 days last year.

When Nguyen, 40, settled in the United States in 1978, he worked with a few youth groups that spoke against the Vietnamese government.

His anti-Communism work ended in 1984, he said, and he began returning to Vietnam in 1990 to establish Social Assistance Program for Vietnam, which provides medical and educational programs to people in Vietnam.

Since then he has been back to Vietnam eight times, usually visiting for three to four weeks.

But on his seventh visit, in March, 1994, Nguyen’s stay was unexpectedly extended.

For almost eight weeks, Vietnamese officials confined Nguyen to a motel room where they quizzed him daily with the same questions: What is the purpose of your organization? Have you ever belonged to any anti-Communist groups? Whom do you know in Vietnam? In the United States?

“I admitted to them that I was once involved in some political groups,” he said. “They were skeptical about why I, someone who fought against the government, would return to Vietnam to help the people and, in essence, the government. They accused me of having conflicting motives.”

“They suspected me of using [the group] as a way of launching some kind of underground liberation movement,” said the mild-mannered man.

Ultimately, he satisfied his interrogators and his name was cleared. On his last visit, in March, 1995, Nguyen said police left him alone. Still, Nguyen said he won’t rest easy on future trips.

“Our group is more stable now,” Nguyen said. “But in Vietnam, the rule is: The only certain thing is that nothing is certain.”