Tiếng Vọng Từ Hoả Lò by Bùi Văn Phú in Viet Tribune, November 30, 2007. Summary in English by Jean Libby, editor, VietAm Review. “Echo from Hoa Lo” by Phu Bui, a student at UC Berkeley in 1981 and today a journalist and public school science teacher, was published in the Vietnamese language newspaper Viet Tribune on November 30, 2007. “Tiếng Vọng Từ Hoả Lò” is the story of the original event at Kroeber Hall on May 1, 1981, which discussed the plight of prisoners and the prison system in Communist Vietnam. The students did this by arranging the event with the Amnesty International Campus Network, particularly Laola Hironaka. They invited former prisoners at the reedcuation camps who had made it to the United States as Boat People refugees to come. The students learned that the author of the anonymous poems “Tieng Vong Tu Day Vuc”, (Echo From the Abyss) which had surfaced among Vietnamese exiles in 1980 was Nguyen Chi Thien, still in prison in Hanoi at Hoa Lo. They were the first to publicly proclaim him as the author with a recitation of his poems in Vietnamese and English translation, which was accomplished by Nguyen Khoa Thai Anh, another UC Berkeley student. Some of the poems which had been set to music by Pham Duy were performed by students and Dr. Nguyet Mehlert of San Jose. The author Phu Bui describes his feelings in creating the program just six years after the fall of Saigon. The escape of Boat People had begun in 1978; by 1980 the Refugee Act allowed admission of new exiles who would become Americans but were then suffering from the hardships of refugee camps in foreign Asian countries. Phu Bui has traveled to Hanoi and been drawn to the Hoa Lo prison museum. He writes that the reeducation camps are closed and the inmates relocated to other prisons. There is still need for attention to human rights in Vietnam and for Prisoners of Conscience throughout the world. Original article in Vietnamese: http://www.viettribune.com/vt/index.php?id=1679 translation for the English summary was made by phuocDiem Truong of San Jose. The poster for the May 1, 1981 event from the Collection of Bui Van Phu is attached.   more »