Dr. Nguyen Thanh Giang has been threatened for voicing his political opinion

Interview of Dr. Nguyen Thanh Giang by Radio Free Asia (translation)

April 11, 2005: Interviewed by Viet Hung, Reporter from Radio Free Asia

Introduction: Dr. Nguyen Thanh Giang is a leading Vietnamese dissident who has been threatened by three so-called veterans who came to his home and said they wanted to talk with him about his political viewpoints. Dr. Nguyen Thanh Giang has reported the incident to the authorities. So far Dr. Giang has not received any reply whatsoever. Nor has the government of Vietnam responded to the French National Assembly's invitation to Dr. Giang to come to France to attend a world conference about Vietnam 30 years after the war ended.

Here are the viewpoints of Dr. Nguyen Thanh Giang in the Radio Free Asia (RFA interview), followed by the text of a letter he wrote to the authorities on April 8 of this year. It begins with his description of a meeting with three men at his house, who were unhappy with his political statements. The U.S. human rights punishment deadline of March 15 he mentions is in reference to the U.S. State Department's designation of Vietnam last December as a "country of particular concern" for its violations of religious freedom. Under U.S. law, the Bush administration was supposed to decide upon some kind of sanctions if Vietnam did not make measurable progress in this area by March 15, but that decision has been postponed.



Dr. Nguyen Thanh Giang (NTG): The conversation ended so abruptly I could not see their names on the cards and their addresses. I saw them off to the front yard and I didn't see either their bicycles or motorcycles. A taxi was probably waiting for them. I can assure you they were not invalids or veterans, merely mercenaries who intended to cause trouble.

Viet Hung (RFA): Did you and your family report the event to the local police?

NTG: No. I did report to the city police three facts: 1) Three men disguised as veterans came to my house to cause trouble; 2) I wanted to ask them to report directly to their superiors my views about Vietnam's dangerously critical situation and my warning suggestions to the leadership; and 3) I told them I had just received an invitation to attend a round-table discussion to be held by the French National Assembly about the results of Vietnam's 30-year postwar period, and asked them if their leaders would let me go.  One of the two city policemen, a colonel, told me that from that day (April 7) to the conference on April 28, the time of 20 days was not long enough for the administrative process. I told them (smiling...) that I knew quite well that if the leaders wanted me to go, or considered my attendance would serve the interest of the party and the state, then it would take only half a day for me to get my passport without problem. They took my invitation and left, and I hadn't heard anything from them ever since.

RFA: Do you think you would be permitted to go?

NTG: I think if the leaders were wise and thinking of the interests of the country as well as the people, they should let me go to show they have been nice to those who they considered as democracy activists, and to admit that I have just wanted to be a peaceful fighter.

RFA: How would you prove that you would not cause anything harmful to the government after it'd let to go?

NTG: I can prove nothing. When I fight peacefully, I'm a nice person. My peaceful struggle aims at being a guide for the Vietnamese Communist party (VCP), not acting against it. The VCP rules my country and people; if it is overthrown, my country and people would suffer. I don't want to oppose it and see it abolished; instead, I just want it to improve it so it can serve the country and people better, deserving their choice. In case it doesn't want to realize that, or if it keeps accusing anyone who has a different view than its own, it would only be further poisoned by opportunists' flatteries, resulting in its collapse by itself. Mr. Tran Dai Son has made an excellent statement by saying that "if we had not opposed the VCP, it would have tumbled long ago."

RFA: Back to the incident at your house on April 5th, please tell us about the open letter you wrote to the government and mass media in Vietnam and any response you have received.

NTG: Nothing as of April 8, the same horrible silence as with the other letter.

RFA: What did you write in the open letter?

NTG: I reported the incident to them and expressed my view regarding my analysis of why there was such a campaign started by the World Security magazine's slanderous article, followed by another article by Nguyen Nhu Phong full of impudence toward Professor Tran Khue ("The true nature of a person under the mask of democracy"). In my discussion with him, he informed me of his intention to take the writer to court. I believe in a law abiding country, Nguyen Nhu Phong must be tried for his misstatements, not vice versa. That's for Tran Khue. As for me, following my disclosure of the incident to my friends, they considered it a very serious matter and were stunned by what had happened.

Was that the beginning of a new campaign? If yes, then there would be four causes: 1) Nguyen Chi Vinh was promoted to Major General and thus stabilized; 2) the U.S. human rights punishment deadline of March 15 has passed with no action from America; 3) the target of being a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) by the end of 2005 is hopeless and no longer attainable; and 4) the consequences of my interview with RFA on Dr. Le Dang Doanh's talks. These might have forced them to begin a campaign.


 

DR. NGUYEN THANH GIANG'S LETTER

 To leaders of the VCP, the state, the government, the National Assembly, and the mass media Following my articles "About the very serious case relating to the General Department 2" written on August 19, 2004 and "The Defense Department's failure in its main duty - Warning of the risk of national collapse", written on the occasion of 60th anniversary of the formation of the Vietnamese people's armed forces and widely distributed, including on the Internet, a number of bad consequences have happened to me, namely:

1. Five letters, three of them allegedly personal and two collective, were addressed to me with threats. The one undated and unsigned, claimed to be authored by a 4th degree war invalid veteran, read: "As a representative for a group of invalids and veterans in my area, I want to warn you that you've gone too far. I advise that you regain your mind soon while you still have time to keep us from acting against you" The letter dated October 20, 2004, claiming to be from "veterans and invalids living in Hoa Binh," said: "Though at old age without body wholeness and good health, we have been so tremendously upset by your letter that we decide to gather more people at your house one day" The letter allegedly from the veterans In Ha Nam with seven signatures raised no reasons but only similar menaces.  There are a few suspicious points in these letters: a) The phrase "you've gone too far" indirectly revealed that the writer had been assigned to carefully study my writings to find I had "gone too far" (from the Party's policies) compared to the recent expression "gone far" only. Someone who has read me carefully, free of any duty of supervising me, would certainly sympathize with me, not against me as it has happened; b) the seven signatures in another letter were said to belong to people living in Ha Nam; however, they looked stately like those signed by ranking cadres; c) the handwriting on the envelopes of those letters sent from Hoa Binh and Ha Nam was of one single person; d) all five letters contained no actual addresses of senders who, if they were true people, would know well that they would not only be protected but rewarded. So, why did they conceal themselves?

2. On October 27, 2004, while I was taking my grandchild home from school, I saw a person waiting with his motorcycle at the intersection of Lang Ha and Thanh Xuan near new Cong Moc bridge who suddenly and intentionally hit me. Uninjured, I had to quietly remain calm and leave.

3. A series of articles containing slanders and threats against me appeared on the People Security, People Army, and Justice papers, unusually bylined with false names. I was told Nguyen The Hong was a reporter for the People Security paper, however, neither his real name nor his pen name was used.

To deal with the foolish campaign of terror, I had to mail on October 28, 2004 "Urgent Letters" to responsible state agencies and also widely to people in and out of Vietnam, causing the campaign to remain quiet for almost half a year. Nevertheless, following: the promotion of Nguyen Chi Vinh to Major General; the uneventful passing of the March 15 deadline for the U.S. to punish Vietnam for its human rights violations; the hopelessness of becoming a WTO member at the end of 12-2005;  and my interview on the talk of Dr. Le Dang Doanh; a dramatic incident took place at my home at 10am on April 4, 2005:  the invasion of three men, an aftermath of a special phenomenon that had occurred some time before, with my home phone ringing unexpectedly once in a while and disconnecting when answered, warning me that my family was being watched.

I learned about my home invasion when I went downstairs and saw two men sitting at opposite chairs while another one seemingly waiting to sit near me in two vacant chairs. They held photocopies of articles accusing me from People Security and Justice papers. They started right away by announcing they were veterans, coming to ask me why I had written that the anti-American war was insignificant to both Vietnam and the United States. I asked them where they came from, and was told two from Hanoi, and one from Hung Yen (not the sender of the letter to me). I asked what war they had fought, they said the American war. I told them I joined in the anti-French war. I have the habit of, while talking, moving my hand comfortably but friendly; however, it caused one of them, perhaps having been warned in advance, to react angrily with a question that why I had pointed my hand at him. At the same time, the one sitting opposite him changed place by moving to sit near me and having his sleeves rolled up. I calmly asked if they had read my articles, and what their titles were. No one knew. I offered to give them the articles and my books for them to read and come back in two weeks for a discussion with dinner and beer. I told them I believed they would understand that what I had written was just for them, since I needed nothing more besides my decent house and family as they had seen. Suddenly, my son appeared, silently sitting at a staircase step a few meters away and staring at the impolite visitors. He was about 1m80 tall and nearly 80kg in weight. Then, my three young friends miraculously came and were cordially invited by me to go upstairs, causing the men to think I had phoned them to come. Coincidentally, my wife returned home some minutes later from a visit to her relatives. I did not know if they were worried, or if through with our conversation, or if they realized they had been wrongly incited by the ones who had assigned them to carry out this mission; in any case, the team leader abruptly stood up and left, followed by the other two. I didn't have enough time to hold their invalids cards to notice their names and addresses, or even to remember how the conversation had ended.  Seeing "the mercenaries" off at the gate, I didn't see any bicycles or motorcycles. While they slowly walked to the street, my wife said there seemed to be a taxi waiting for them.

I remember when General Tran Do was still alive, he had to undergo unsuccessful campaigns against him, including a trap set by a female spy who invited him to a hotel to receive documents from Dalat. As soon as he entered the room, she got undressed and held him tight for a hidden camera to take pictures that were showed later to revolutionary seniors and generals at their club's discussions. Some other democracy activists were also victims of that kind of trap. As for me, those guys must have thoroughly considered it and concluded it to be not as practicable as the rowdy home visit.

I have written thousands of pages and hundreds of essays in many fields and on several socio-political issues. They are certainly not useless pages but clear proof of what is right or wrong that might cause so much fear and hatred. I only wish to show them to the public for the people to analyze, criticize, and judge. Why haven't those 'guys' dared to do so, being rich enough to hire hack writers and command tens of thousands of "reasoners". Why were they so muddleheaded to use such base rowdy means?

I urgently send this report to leaders of the party, state, government, and National Assembly of Vietnam and the general opinion, not only with the expectation that this kind of terror campaign will be stopped for my own safety, but also to preserve the prestige of the party and state from defamation, and the people's faith from deterioration, by the foolish deeds of some irresponsible authorities.


Hanoi, 8 April 2005
Nguyen Thanh Giang
No. 6 - Airplane geophysics collective housing
Trung Van- Tu Liem- Hanoi