Democracy activism a 'battle without boundaries'

Democracy activists have taken a new tack against the Communist regime in Vietnam by creating a worldwide network over the Internet.

By DEEPA BHARATH
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Giang Nguyen never strays too far from her computer.

Her mind hovers around a world that revolves in cyberspace. Her eyes search for the people whose only way to reach out to her is from behind that brightly lit screen.

Nguyen is a graduate student of broadcast journalism at Northwestern University in Illinois and a Santa Ana resident. She's also a New Age democracy activist, as are several hundred others in Westminster's Little Saigon and surrounding communities whose common goal is to rid Vietnam of its Communist regime.

She does not shout anti-Communist slogans, plant signs on sidewalks or march in rallies any more. Instead, she sends e-mails to vocal political dissidents in her home country who are spearheading a fight for freedom. She chats with them using a computer program called Paltalk. Sometimes, she sees their bloody or bandaged faces.

"All I can do is offer them moral support and shed a few tears for what they've gone through," Nguyen, 30, said. "But that still makes me part of the movement. I'm fighting for democracy in my own way."

Nguyen is a member of the Vietnam Reform Party or Viet Tan, founded in 1982 with the sole aim of putting an end to the Communist regime in the country of 85 million people. But over the years, the party has evolved from an underground operation working mainly within Vietnam to an international group with tens of thousands of members in the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, Australia and other Asian countries.

Even though members came into the open as recently as three years ago, they keep much of their operation secret because of the threat of being arrested or even executed, said Diem Do, chairman of Viet Tan worldwide.

"You cannot expect to bring about major change by hiding underground,'' he said.

A searing memory

Do, a bookish, bespectacled business administrator, sometimes wonders about the surreal nature of his "other job" but never doubts its significance. Do was 12 when he escaped Vietnam by ship with his parents and seven siblings on April 29, 1975, a day before the fall of Saigon.

"Two other ships – with hundreds of men, women and little children on board – got blown up," he said. "And I just remember standing there on the deck, staring at those two big balls of fire as they faded into the horizon."

It's a scene that is seared in his memory.

Do's involvement in Viet Tan began in 1982, when he was an undergraduate student at UCLA. Viet Tan's method appealed to him. It was all about arming people with the information they lack.

"It's sowing the seeds of democracy," he said.

Members do it by downloading copies of the U.S. Constitution onto the computers of dissidents in Vietnam, who then share that information with the locals. Members use e-mail and cell-phone text chats to issue alerts. They put up videos on the Internet's YouTube and conduct international dialog through Paltalk.

Every time the Vietnamese government erects a firewall, "we find a way to break it down," Do said. "This is a battle without boundaries."

The Vietnamese Embassy in Washington, D.C., did not return calls asking about the group.

Viet Tan members have become especially vigilant over the past few months because the government has been aggressively arresting political dissidents, said Dung Tran, Viet Tan's Southern California representative.

"There is no freedom in that country – be it personal, political or religious," he said.

The most recent incident, where dissidents were prevented from meeting Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Garden Grove, during her trip to Vietnam, has also sparked outrage in Washington.

Sanchez said she was shocked that the government would crack down on dissidents in front of her and the ambassador.

"During this trip I saw and felt the government's oppressive ways firsthand," she said. She had to change cell phones four times because government agents were monitoring her calls, she said.

The people of Vietnam too seem to have a strong desire for a democratic form of government, Sanchez said.

"Viet Tan is doing a great job to help achieve that," she said. "The government there very actively tries to stop their e-mail, radio and video communications but hasn't been very successful."

Vietnamese officials have consistently denied allegations of harassing dissidents or those who speak out against the regime.

'The right thing to do'

Little Saigon members are as involved in the fight as those in Vietnam, Do said. Many sacrifice their vacation time. Even students as young as 18 spend summers helping out.

Their projects include distributing educational material, talking to local people and recruiting members for Viet Tan. A prominent Garden Grove-based entrepreneur, who would identify himself only by his last name, Nguyen, because he fears for his safety, said he has made more than 50 trips to Vietnam to do such recruiting.

"I've talked to a lot of people, from college students, professors and bankers to people in the police department and other government officials," Nguyen said.

But the group takes several precautions before attempting to recruit someone, said Tran, who organizes these operations and used to be Nguyen's "handler."

"It sounds like we're using CIA lingo, but the kind of work we do is not very different from spy stuff," he said.

Some of their members are armed but only for self-defense, Tran said.

"Our primary goal is to achieve democracy for Vietnam through nonviolent means," he said. "But we do need to defend ourselves if we're attacked. And we're attacked a lot."

Nguyen said that on his last trip to Vietnam, in 2005, Vietnamese police arrested him while he was traveling from Ho Chi Minh City to a town in North Vietnam. He was imprisoned in an abandoned house for several days but was released when his wife contacted the U.S. ambassador, who requested his release.

"I was very, very lucky," Nguyen said. "But I'd do it again in a heartbeat.''

Suffering harassment has become a way of life for party members here and in Vietnam, Tran said. Yet there's a perfectly good reason why people who have lives and careers here will risk everything for a country they fled decades ago, he said.

"It's the right thing to do," he said. "When you are a person with a conscience and you see such oppression, what do you do? Well, we can't keep quiet and do nothing."

Change on horizon?

The rising number of dissidents, international attention and economic progress may mean that Vietnam is ripe for change, said Russell Dalton, a UC Irvine political science professor and one of the academicians who conducted the first public opinion survey on politics in Vietnam.

The 2001 study, commissioned by UCI's Center for the Study of Democracy, found that 72 percent to 74 percent of Vietnamese believe that despite its faults, democracy is the best form of government, Dalton said.

The center has conducted a follow-up study this year, but those results are yet to be reviewed, he said.

"But given the economic liberalization of Vietnam and its recent membership in the World Trade Organization, I would be surprised if people aren't more pro-democracy now than they were six years ago," Dalton said.

It is reasonable to believe that the Communist regime will cave in within the next 30 to 40 years, he said.

"If you take the example of China and now Vietnam, their own economic success erodes their respective Communist regimes," Dalton said.

Change is also visible here in Little Saigon in the attitudes of different generations of Vietnamese-Americans, said Du Mien, 57, a community leader and veteran journalist.

"The first generation is extreme in our stand against Communism because we're still bitter, and no one can blame us for being bitter," he said.

But organizations such as Viet Tan are more liberal in the sense that they don't look at toppling the Communist regime as an end in itself but take a broader view of Vietnam's social and economic problems, he said.

The biggest problem, however, is spreading the seeds of democracy in a nation with 85 million residents, Mien said.

"How many people in Vietnam have computers?" he said. "Viet Tan has a tough task to accomplish. But I hope they do it."

Viet Tan milestones

April 30, 1975: Fall of Saigon

April 30, 1980: An organization called the National United Front for the Freedom of Vietnam was founded by various groups in Vietnam against the Communist Party.

1985: Renamed Viet Tan, reorganized itself after some of the original members parted ways and became a worldwide movement.

1992: Started the New Horizon radio station, which eventually moved to 1503 AM frequency. Viet Tan was able to broadcast for one hour daily from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m., Vietnam time

Sept. 19, 2004: The party that was largely underground surfaced with a new name: the Vietnam Reform Party.

Source: www.viettan.org

Black April events

Local community members will get together during various events to commemorate "Black April" or the fall of Saigon, which originally happened on April 30, 1975. Here is a list of some of those events:

April 27-29: Screening of the film "Journey to the Fall" along with a candlelight vigil and a moment of silence at Regal Theater in Garden Grove and Edwards Theater in Westminster.

April 28: A commemoration at the Vietnam War Memorial from 6 to 9 p.m. at Sid Goldstein Freedom Park, 14180 All American Way in Westminster.

April 28-30: Wall of Conscience – a display outside Asian Garden Mall, 9200 Bolsa Ave.

April 28: Car parade down Bolsa Avenue with Vietnamese and American flags, sponsored by the Phan Boi Chau Youth Organization.

April 30: Black April Commemoration at the Fowler Museum, UCLA.

For more information about these events, call Timothy Ngo at 714-414-6626 or Hung Nguyen at 714-553-4672.

Contact the writer: 714-445-6685 or dbharath@ocregister.com