TO:  Amnesty International Leadership Discussion group:

Nguyen Chi Thien, of North Vietnam (now unified Vietnam) was one of the original Prisoners of Conscience from the 1980s to 1991, when he was released due to international pressure.  Ho Chi Minh put him in prison in 1961 for his irreverent (to Communists) poetry.  He wasn't allowed paper and pen to write.  They knew how effective prison was for revolutionaries when the Communists were imprisoned by the French in the Hoa Lo prison in the 1930s and 1940s.  So he developed his memory to compose his poetry.

In 1979, during a brief period of release, Thien smuggled a hastily-written hidden manuscript into the British Embassy in Hanoi.  They refused him asylum, and he spent twelve more terrible years at the Hoa Lo (Hanoi Hilton) Central Prison and the even more brutal numbered camps.  Eight of those years were in solitary darkness, in leg stocks.

Peter Benenson heard of his plight, and so did the Amnesty International Campus network at UC Berkeley, by 1981.  The diplomats had sent his manuscript to London, as promised.

I have edited the English language manuscripts of Nguyen Chi Thien for Yale University (who first published his work in bilingual format in 1985, winning the Rotterdam Poetry Prize) and now on my own as Allies for Freedom publishers (legal dba) in California.  I have developed the story of Amnesty International and the 1988 - 1991 mass letter campaign that drew support from heads of state like Leopold Senghor (also a prisoner poet), John Major of UK, and King Hussein of Jordan, the BBC, French filmmaker Michel Duval, and others for the cover of the Yale English language publication, Hoa Lo / Hanoi Hilton Stories by Nguyen Chi Thien.

Amnesty International's Prisoner of Conscience identity was the catalyst for this success.  He was moved into an infirmary in 1990 because he was near death and the Communist government knew that he could not be anonymously buried.  He was released in 1991 one step ahead of a visit by the International Red Cross.

Nguyen Chi Thien's success story has taken a bad turn.  A small group of well-financed Vietnamese in America have challenged his history of poetry publication, including the assistance by Amnesty International.

The book published in October 2008, reprinting two of his prose prison life stories in English and in Vietnamese has the documented history of a program at the UC Berkeley campus in 1981 where Vietnamese refugee students read his work in Vietnamese and in English translation, which they did themselves.  It was Laola Hironaka of Amnesty International Campus Network who turned them on to do this.  It was not known at the time where he was imprisoned or if he were alive or dead.  This history is written in the new book by Bui Van Phu, who is now a middle school science teacher and a journalist.

I would like to mail copies of the two books which tell the Amnesty International relationship (both Yale Southeast Asia Studies in 2007 and Allies for Freedom publishers in 2008) to interested regions and chapters for review and your own historical record.

Even more, we are seeking information from Laola Hironaka and others who brought his identity forward in 1981.  The first publication of his manuscript was anonymous, very likely to protect him while in prison.  His signed name and address were cut from the original manuscript.

This story is indeed legendary.  The manuscript was given to Prof. Patrick Honey at the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies.  He gave copies to BBC, to Amnesty International, and to Que Me, Action for Democracy in Vietnam, in Paris.  The first editions were published by Vietnamese émigrés in the United States in August 1980.

Although Nguyen Chi Thien (now an American citizen) and I had tried to trace his original manuscript, all the British Foreign Office knew was that it was last known in the hands of Professor Honey.  Que Me, who published his work as Chants de Prison/Nguc Ca/Prison Songs (trilingual) in 1982 visited Prof. Patrick Honey and his wife in London in 1986, close to the time of the death of his first wife.  He told Mr. Vo Van Ai and Penelope Faulkner he still had the manuscript.

Prof. Honey died in 2005 and his second wife, Isabelle Boyer, gave the manuscript to a Vietnamese professor from London named Le Manh Hung.  In 2008, just a few months ago, Le Manh Hung came to southern California to visit Nguyen Chi Thien and tell him that he had the manuscript for him if he could ascertain he was the author. That accomplished, he mailed the original manuscript to the correct author.

Because of the disparagement of Nguyen Chi Thien by one or two Vietnamese language journals who print anything because "Vietnamese do not sue other Vietnamese" the author must again retrace the history of the manuscript that occurred while he was in prison in Vietnam.  He needs your help as a former Prisoner of Conscience to clear his name and retain his rightful place in literature and history.

I joined Amnesty International Group 19 in order to develop the history of my chosen author's work.  He had been hosted by the late Ginetta Sagan when he came to the United States in 1995.  He was also hosted by Samson Tu, the physical and moral mentor of our Group.

I have found among Group 19 members a commonality of purpose and continue in order to call attention to our Prisoner of Conscience Mattewos Habteab of Eritrea -- who may not be alive -- and prisoners in Vietnam today such as Father Nguyen Van Ly.  Not concidentally, Nguyen Chi Thien and Father Ly were in prison together in 1991.  The poet Thien was released and Father Ly adopted as a Prisoner of Conscience.   Father Ly was released but now is in his third prison term of eight years beginning in 2007.  He has been adopted as a Prisoner of Conscience again by Group 19 and California Amnesty International leadership, Vietnam Country specialist Stephen Denney, who developed new petitions for tabling.  We send petitions to the Communist government of Vietnam about the imprisonment of Father Nguyen Van Ly.

I am eager to send copies of both these books to Amnesty International chapters and regions and seek everyone's help in sorting out the processes that occurred with the original manuscript and the AI role in its dissemination.

My sincere gratitude,

Jean Libby

Member, Group 19

Palo Alto, California USA

Editor, Allies for Freedom publishers

Hai Truyen Tu – Two Prison Life Stories

English and Vietnamese

ISBN 978-0-9773638-6-5

www.vietamreview.net/handwriting.html

www.vietamreview.net/Hai_Truyen_Tu.html