Betraying Free Vietnam

(Washington, D.C.): On the eve of President Clinton’s visit to communist
Vietnam, the Victims
of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOCMF) held its annual Truman-Reagan Freedom
Awards dinner. This event, held last night in Washington, D.C., provided a fitting reminder of
what the struggle for freedom in Vietnam and elsewhere throughout the Cold War was about–
and how severely the Clinton/Gore administration has undermined America’s victory in that
twilight struggle through its embrace of communist regimes around the world.

One of those honored by the VOCMF was Doan Viet Hoat — a man who knows well the
Vietnam that President Clinton will be seeing. He spent nearly two decades in Vietnam’s
notorious political prisons for his criticism of the one-party state. He was a political prisoner
from 1976 to 1988 because of his American education and his temerity in forming the “Freedom
Forum” in Vietnam. His refusal to adapt to the regime’s efforts to re-educate him caused him to
be incarcerated again from 1990 to 1998, after he published an essay entitled “The True Nature
of Contemporary Vietnam.”

President Clinton’s draft-dodging opposition to the Vietnam War has already earned him
special
points with the Vietnamese communists. One Vietnamese official was quoted in today’s
Washington Post saying, “the good Americans were the people who opposed the war
and the
crimes that were committed here.” Yet, the Post, not a newspaper known for shrill
anti-communist proclivities, observed in an editorial today:

The (Vietnamese)government still muzzles the media, controls the judges, detains opponents
arbitrarily, restricts travel, forbids advocacy of multiparty politics, and spouts Marxist-Leninist
dogma. The ruling clique views Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms as a lesson in what not to do, since
they unleashed forces that broke the grip of the Communist Party. Instead, China’s iron-fisted
regime is the preferred model. Vietnam’s security apparatus is said to match
East Germany’s Stasi
in omnipresence and ferocity.

We can only hope that President Clinton will explicitly associate himself with the millions of
victims of communism in Vietnam like Doan Viet Hoat, not their odious oppressors with whom
he wants to do business.

Truman-Reagan Freedom Award14 November 2000

I am honored to receive tonight the Truman-Reagan Award presented to me by the Victims
of
Communism Memorial Foundation. I would like to offer this honor to millions of Vietnamese
victims of communism, dead or still alive, inside Vietnam or now living in exile in the United
States and all over the world. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese have been killed by the
communists since the first days of their presence in Vietnam….

We all want to look to the future and not to the past. But the lessons of the past must be
remembered so that the future would be brighter for generations to come. And we have learned
from the past fifty years at least one valuable lesson: Nazi and communist regimes would not
have been defeated if indifference and passivity had prevailed. Our presence here tonight is a
clear proof of our vigorous concern and commitment for the cause of liberty, democracy and
human dignity for all people around the world.

In the past, Vietnam and the United States were bound together by the war to contain
international communism. Nowadays I believe we again share our commitment to a better
Vietnam, a Vietnam freed of all types of dictatorship, a Vietnam of freedom, of justice, of
prosperity, of equal opportunity for every Vietnamese, regardless of differences in religion,
ideology and political opinions.

Such a Vietnam still remains a dream of all Vietnamese, in the country and overseas.
The
present communist leaders, unfortunately, continue to deny the Vietnamese people the
opportunities to realize their dream. After 25 years in peace, Vietnam continues to be
one of
the poorest countries in Southeast Asia and in the world. The government continues to deprive
the people of fundamental freedoms. Abuse of power, corruption, and inefficiency prevail in all
levels of government.

Dissenting voices and popular protests are becoming widespread. Vietnam is in a new crisis,
threatening the sustainable development and the stability of the country and of the region. I
believe that this new crisis is more political than economic.

Since the early 1990’s the United States has begun a new type of involvement in Vietnam,
the
involvement in peace and for a developed and free Vietnam. The signing of the bilateral trade
agreement in July and President Bill Clinton’s visit in two more days culminate the first stage of
this new involvement. In this first stage, the United States has been supporting the communist
government in their economic transition to a market system.

The time has come now for the United States to support the Vietnamese people in their
efforts
make a free market system exist, and to build up an open and democratic civil society. Free trade
and free market system require fundamental freedoms — freedom to pursue happiness,
guaranteed by equal opportunity; freedom to acquire and exchange information and ideas. And
most important of all, freedom to choose the leaders and to make them accountable for their
policies and decisions.

Without these basic freedoms, free trade will hardly take shape, and will benefit the corrupt
minority of officials and not the majority of the people, who live in poverty. The
Vietnamese
people hope that President Clinton will send a clear message of support for freedom and
human rights in his visit to Vietnam. They also expect that American aid would benefit
the
private sectors — and not the government — in all areas, economic, cultural, educational,
informatics.

American engagement will only be positive if it helps strengthen the people’s power
and not
the dictators’. It is only by that that the United States would help to promote the
emergence of a
new Vietnam, the Vietnam of the future — and neither of the past, nor of the present. Only by that
can all of us — Americans, Vietnamese-Americans and Vietnamese — work together to build up a
new world, a world with no more victims of communism, no more victims of backwardness and
dictatorship. We all believe in that future, and we shall work together for that future.