Vietnam, State Department Houston discuss consulate by PHAN, your online buddy Link: http://phanthanh.multiply.com/links/184 Vietnam, State Department Houston discuss consulate.... June 26, 2008, 2:25PM Vietnam, State Department discuss Houston consulate Prime minister meets with business leaders... Mayra Beltran: Houston Chronicle June 26, 2008, 2:25PM Vietnam, State Department discuss Houston consulate Prime minister meets with business leaders By JENALIA MORENO Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle Vietnam's ambassador to the U.S. said in Houston today that his nation would like to open a consul general's office here. "We have agreed in principle," said Ambassador Le Cong Phung, during a break in today's meeting between Vietnam's prime minister and Texas business leaders at a Galleria-area hotel. "We have got one office in the East, the embassy, and one in the West in San Francisco. The United States is a huge country. We cannot cover it all." Nguyen Tan Dung and his delegation of more than 100 Vietnamese officials are meeting with Texas cotton producers, energy company officials and airline executives to discuss ways to expand trade between the two nations. His meeting comes amid protests from members of the local Vietnamese community who claim Dung's government has one of the world's worst records on human rights. ********************** Pictures follow of demonstration by the Vietnamese community in Houston. If you haven’t seen Phan Thanh’s excellent site before – be prepared to spend a couple of hours looking at historic photos and current events. His own essay “I will return to Vietnam when …” is heartbreaking. All the better for bilingual readers, some are in Vietnamese and some in English. Jean Libby, editor VietAm Review http://vietamreview.blogharbor.com   more »

The Vietnamese Canadian Federation in Ottawa has published Gift of Freedom; How Ottawa welcomed the Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian Refugees by Brian Buckley (General Store Publishing House, 2008). $20 The book sales benefit the Boat People Museum in Ottawa. Review by Jean Libby, VietAm Review: Gift of Freedom is an English-language history of the Southeast Asian refugees in Canada. It is professionally written and historically helpful for anyone who wants information about the issues and experiences of Boat People refugees to Canada from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos between 1979 and 2008. That’s right, 2008 – when the last refugee camp of Vietnamese Boat People in the Philippines, Palawan, was closed. The people who had not been accepted by other countries were in danger of deportation back to Vietnam. The Vietnamese Canadian Federation persuaded the Canadian government to take them as Permanent Residents immediately. The unique Canadian history alone would be worthy of a book, but Gift of Freedom also develops the original exodus beginning in 1977 and its roots in the Vietnam War of 1954-1975, continuing with the wars between the victorious Communist countries and that important relationship to the desperation so great that people knowingly risked their lives and those of their children to cast themselves into the China Sea on rickety boats to seek refuge and asylum. It is the best history for general readers of English that I have seen of the Vietnam War – in which Canadian troops also fought in alliance with South Vietnam (1)–and the aftermath as it affected people in the defeated country. Buckley describes it as a “proxy war between East and West, a struggle between contending ideologies, an interstate conflict among local powers, and a guerilla war.” Paths of migration of all ethnic groups are mapped. The graphic appeal of Gift of Freedom; How Ottawa welcomed the Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian refugees is a meeting of professionalism and passion for the subject matter demonstrated by the Book Committee of the Vietnamese Canadian Federation, particularly former president Can D. Le. The Canadian government did not send official troops as they did in World War II, the Korean Conflict, Desert Storm, and presently in Afghanistan. Over 30,000 Canadians volunteered to fight with American units during the Vietnam War. Native Canadian people (Mohawk Indians) were especially represented as troops fighting alongside the U.S. in alliance with South Vietnam.    more »

SILVERDOCS - AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival www.SILVERDOCS.com BETRAYAL, THE NERAKHOON USA, 2008, 96 Minutes, English, Laotian with English subtitles Beautifully filmed and spanning 23 years, THE BETRAYAL follows a Laotian family who made a harrowing escape from their homeland in the 1970s and eventually settled in New York City. Celebrated cinematographer Ellen Kuras offers a stirring depiction of life in exile and the far-reaching consequences of the Vietnam era. Saturday. June 21, 6:30 p.m. AFI Silver Theatre, The AFI Silver Theatre is located at 8633 Colesville Road - at the intersection of Colesville Road and Georgia Avenue - in the heart of the new downtown Silver Spring. Metro: Silver Spring The Vietnamese American Experience at Smithsonian, June 26, 2008. Lecture Hall, S. Dillon Ripley Center, 1100 Jefferson Drive, S.W. Washington D.C. 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. Metro: Smithsonian Award-winning filmmaker, Ham Tran, returns to the Smithsonian with his first film, The Anniversary, a 28-minute short film about two brothers separated by the Vietnam War, that began as Tran's UCLA graduate school thesis project. Following the screening, Ham Tran will be joined by Professor Linda Trinh Vo, chair of Asian American Studies at U.C. Irvine and by Nguyen Ngoc Bich, linguist, to discuss the Vietnamese American experience captured in the film. Chương-trình Người Mỹ gốc Á-châu Thái-bình-dương của Viện Smithsonian sẽ trình chiếu một phim về kinh-nghiệm của người Mỹ gốc Việt sau đó sẽ có thảo-luận vào ngày thứ Năm, 26 tháng 6, 2008, tới đây trong Giảng-đường của Trung-tâm S. Dillon Ripley thuộc Viện Smithsonian. Cuốn phim được chiếu lần này là phim ngắn “Ngày Giỗ” của nhà đạo diễn Trần Hàm, một cuốn phim đã đoạt nhiều giải. Cuốn phim 28 phút này kể chuyện về hai anh em bị xa cách nhau do chiến-tranh Việt-nam gây nên. Cuốn phim ban đầu chỉ là một dự-án để nộp luận-án cao-học của tác-giả ở UCLA, tuy-nhiên sau khi hoàn-tất đã đoạt 30 giải thưởng về phim ảnh, kể cả vào chung-kết để lãnh Giải thưởng của Học-viện Phim năm 2004 trong loại “Phim ngắn hay nhất về Sống thực.” Sau phần chiếu phim, đạo diễn Trần Hàm sẽ có mặt để bàn về kinh-nghiệm của người Mỹ gốc Việt như được phản ảnh trong phim cùng với G.S. Linda Võ Trinh, Khoa-trưởng Ngành nghiên cứu về Người Mỹ gốc AC-TBD Viện ĐH California, Irvine, và G.S. Nguyễn Ngọc Bích, chuyên-gia ngôn-ngữ-học. Free and open to the public: first come, first served.   more »

English translation by Nguyen Chi Thien, the author of Hoa Lo, Hanoi Hilton Stores (Yale University Council on Southeast Asia Studies, 2007) "The Vietnamese refugees who have their relatives who died in reeducation camps located in the jungles of North Vietnam (after the fall of Saigon) demanded that the remains of their relatives should be brought home. These graves have been neglected so long. The Vietnamese government has accepted this non-political humanitarian demand. HO/POW Association P. O. Box 8496 Pear Land TX 77584 Tel. 832-725-3231. USA, March 23, 2008 Translation on June 5, 2008. Thank you Mike Benge for alerting us about this new policy of the VN government.   more »