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Dear British Embassy Press officials in Vietnam,
Today is a very honorable anniversary in your
history. It is twenty-seven years ago
today that the dissident poet Nguyen Chi Thien, who had composed poetry against
the Communist regime of Vietnam while in concentration “reeducation”
camps for fifteen years since 1961, brought his manuscript "Hoa Dia Nguc"
(Flowers of Hell) to your embassy on Ly Thuong Kiet Street and asked that
it published in the free world.
These poems were necessarily composed in the
mind of the author, Nguyen Chi Thien, while he was imprisoned in many camps in North Vietnam,
because he was not allowed pen and paper.
Chi Thien physcially broke through the
reception area of your embassy on July 16, 1979, to deliver his manuscript,
written hastily and secretly in Hanoi in a period of a few days. The
police were called, and the author was taken to the Hoa Lo prison (known as the
Hanoi Hilton because it was so-named by the American flyers who were imprisoned
there from 1967-1973) and jailed there for eight years, half of that in
solitary confinement and leg stocks.
But the British diplomats kept their promise and
delivered his manuscript to the free world, where overseas Vietnamese in the USA first
published it in their newspapers. By 1985 the poetry was translated into
French and English editions, set to music by the great musician Pham Duy, and
had won the International Poetry Prize at Rotterdam.
The Communist government of Vietnam
responded by moving Mr. Nguyen Chi Thien to worse prisons than Hoa Lo, to the
numbered camps, where by 1988 he was nearly dead, starved and weighing
less than eighty pounds. An international campaign for his release was
begun by his sister in Hanoi,
Mrs. Nguyen-Thi-Hao (who passed away in November, 2004) by sending his
photograph to human rights groups around the world. This was at great
personal risk because her occupation was a social service worker, and her own
son (now also deceased) had been arrested for helping his uncle prepare his
manuscript in July, 1979.
In 1991 the Amnesty International organization
published the photograph of Nguyen Chi Thien that was also brought to the
British Embassy with his manuscript. Others, including heads
of state such as British Prime Minister John Major, wrote to the Hanoi
government, and in 1991 the poet Nguyen Chi Thien was moved to the Ba Sao
prison, treated for his severe debilitation, and released to live in Hanoi with
his sister.
His health did not improve rapidly, and he
was constantly watched -- virtually under house arrest. With the
assistance of his brother, who had immigrated to the USA under the H.O. program
(he had been jailed for thirteen years after 1975) and from human rights
organizations and a retired American military officer who was Japanese
American (and a political prisoner himself with his family and all others
of Japanese descent in the USA during World War II) the author of Hoa Dia Nguc
was allowed to immigrate to the United States in November, 1995. The
following year he published the second "Hoa Dia Nguc," the poems
composed in his mind during his third period of imprisonment. In all, the
author was imprisoned by the Communist regime of Vietnam for twenty-seven
years. This past April he edited his complete
poems, over 700, from his memory and his literary genius, into a
single volume. His work is still banned in Vietnam.
Nguyen Chi Thien is now a U.S.
citizen.
This anniversary commemoration is a plea for you
to be concerned about Vietnamese dissidents, particularly writers, who are
harassed and even imprisoned still in Vietnam. Recently a petition
was signed by 118 such dissidents to seek relief from proclamations of the 10th
VCP that further tighten the grip of censorship and deliberate mind control on
the people. This petition, called "Manifesto 2006," was
also presented to the Canadian Parliament by Vietnamese Canadians who are
supporting them, keeping the light of the free world pointed toward
the shadows of the Communist regime of Vietnam.
Thank you.
Jean Libby, editor
http://www.vietamreview.net
http://vietamreview.blogharbor.com
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