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Wednesday, May 9, 2007
 
Journey From The Fall.

There is a movie playing across town I would like to see called Journey from the Fall (2006). By across town I mean the Regal Cinemas Ballston Common, which is some place in Arlington. On the Orange line I think, so it is possible, although not likely. I don't own a car, what is a simple errand for most people is a logistical grind for me. Maybe I can talk Carlton into buying it for Non-Print. The movie is the story of a family that left Vietnam as refugees after the fall of Saigon, Their story and the story of those they left behind. The story is modeled largely on the writer/director Ham Tran's own life. It is a story of a family similar to my friend Tran's. Tran saw this movie with her family which, really, is how I found out about it. The little press movie got has been very favorable Movie - Journey From the Fall - New York Times. There also seems to be a book associated with the movie: Journey from the fall = Vuot song : a photographers diary.

I pointed out to Tran that the web site associated with the film Journey From the Fall was looking for stories of similar families, but she thought that her family's story was not uncommon, just one among millions. Tran mentioned that she thought there was a archive project associated with the Smithsonian that was collecting pictures of Vietnamese refugees from the boat people period but I have been unable so far to determine precisely who.

In one of the last conversations I had with Tran concerning Vietnam, she asked if I knew of the trial of Father Ly. I did sort of, and had been planing to write a post (very much like this one) about it. I want to point out that things like this reveal the limitations of trying to follow substantive stories through RSS feeds. It just doesn't work: ICMPA | University of Maryland. Father Nguyen Van Ly who Tran told me was early in his carreer was executive secretary to the Bishop in Saigon, was arrested, tried BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Vietnam dissident priest on trial and sentenced in unfathomably quick succession last month for the crime of believing in democracy and religious freedom. And for being the cofounder of a group called Bloc 8406 (apparently "alliance of 08Apr06") Bloc 8406 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia which has put some of this in writing 2006 Manifesto on Freedom and Democracy for Vietnam� . There is also a web site Freedom Democracy for Vietnam tdngonluan.com Tá»± Do Thông Tin Ngôn Luáª-n Viá»[omega]t Nam that follows this movement. If you didn't catch this Father Ly's trial was memorable for the moment he was physically muzzled by a man (whose express job this seemed to be) who clapped his hand over the priests mouth after he was sentenced to eight years.

This situation brings up the very ugly post WTO, U S trade relations, and APEC climate in Vietnam Lawmakers demand that Vietnam release three jailed dissidents. There have been more arrests many more since Father Ly's and there will be more trials Dissidents face trials in Vietnam. Lawyers Nguyen Van Dai, 38, Le Thi Cong Nhan, 28, and others. Dai founded the outlawed committee for Human rights in vietnam, and nhan is a spokeswomen for the outlawed progressive party. Tran Khai Thanh Thuy, a well known journalist and writer. In all it seems to be the most severe crackdown in twenty years Vietnam's vise on dissent. In their own words:

"No one in Vietnam is arrested due to their political views or religion - only those who violate our country's laws, and in turn we process them in line with our laws," a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman said (identified as Le Dzung in a Cuban news service piece) [ Vietnam's Communist leadership schedules trials for propaganda and forming parties ].

What they appear to be declining to mention is that Vietnam's laws prohibit political and religious views of any kind.

The question that those who have looked into this are trying to answer is why this is happening now. Is it just a finger in the eye of free trade and engagement advocates. A last laugh by proponents of managed market economies. More likely, as some of these stories note, this is occurring ahead of Party elections. The real story is how tenuous control of Vietnam is becoming by its ruling regime, and how afraid they are of losing control. There is a rising and politically aware middle class, and they may be inclined to force a more widespread sharing of power. In the midst of this is the Resolution of Rep. Smith [R NJ-4] OpenCongress - Search Results H. Res. 243 which calls for the release of all prisoners of conscience and seeks a return of Vietnam to the list of nations repressing religious freedom GovTrack: H. Res. 243: Calling on the Government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to immediately and... (Vote On Passage). Rep. Smith along with Rep. Stupak [D, MI] and Northern Virginia's Rep. Frank Wolf wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal explaining the resolution's view Memo to Hanoi.

Democracy is a dangerous thing though. The Bush Administration called for democracy in the middle east and now feels they got more than they bargained for. The attitude of this administration in Vietnams case is not certain. My own feeling is that no state that is set up as a one party state owns the least measure of legitimacy. The facts may be that they are in control, engagement may be the course of non violence, but engagement must proceed so that there is always some lever against reaction.


Foot note: I make a rough draft for these posts. I keep these drafts in plain text and avoid unicode like the plague. Once you get any unicode on a document you can't get it off (like a text string with Vietnamese diacritics for instance) and since Macs seem to think Microsoft UTF 8 is really UTF 16 little endian (or something like that) they will open your document as a page full of random chinese characters, and there ain't no going back. Retype everything and ferret out all the links from memory.


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