Vietnam Human Rights Journal
From Ape to Man
From ape to man, the process took millions of years
From man to ape, how many years?
World, please come and visit
The concentration camps in the heart of the far-off jungles!
Naked prisoners, taking baths together in herds
Living in ill-smelling darkness with lice and mosquitoes.
Fighting with each other for a piece of manioc or sweet
potato
Chained, shot, dragged, slit up at the will of their captors
Thrown away for the rats to bite without anyone's notice!
This kind of ape is not fast but very slow in action indeed
Quite different from that of the remote prehistory
They are hungry, they are thin as toothpicks
And yet they produce the nation's wealth all year long
World, please come and visit!
Poem of Nguyen Chi Thien written in 1967. Translated by
Nguyen Huu Hieu. A long time prisoner of conscience in northern
Vietnam, Thien was allowed to emigrate from Vietnam a few years
ago for health reasons and is now living in the United States).
Contents
-
Introduction Introductory remarks about this web page.
-
Asian
Values and Democracy Message by President Vaclav Havel
on the
presentation of Letters from Prison by Wei Jingsheng
-
Buddhism
and Communism A letter by Ven. Thich Quang Do, Secretary
General of
the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam. After the war ended the
government
proceeded to suppress Buddhism and arrested the most prominent
monks, including
Ven. Quang Do.
-
Fr. Chan
Tin Letter by Father Chan Tin to Cardinal Pham Dinh Tung of
the Vietnamese
Catholic Church, commenting on the recent Politburo's
Directive on
Religions and the problems the Church is facing under the
communist
regime.
-
Ginetta
Sagan Honored Clinton's statement when he
presented the
USA's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom,
to Ginetta
Sagan, who was one of the first people to systematically
investigate
reports of mistreatment of re-education camp prisoners in
Vietnam
-
Human
Rights in Vietnam Speech on Human Rights in Vietnam,
1998.
-
Monk
Protests Repression Thich Huyen Quang Protests
Religious Repression
in Vietnam. Thich Huyen Quang is one of the most prominent monks
in Vietnam,
with the An Quang Buddhists. He has spent most of the last 24
years under house
arrest or in prison for his protests against religious repression
and other
human rights violations.
-
The
Paris Agreements and Human Rights in Vietnam Today. On the
180-degree
reversal on this issue by the NLF and Democratic Republic of
Vietnam, after
1975.
-
Human
rights and daily life in Vietnam, 1990. On how political
discrimination has
been exercised against Vietnamese for their family
background.
- A Form of
Torture: Food Deprivation, by Cao Ngoc Phuong (now known as Sister Chan
Khong). On how hunger has been used to manipulate and torture
re-education
camp prisoners in Vietnam.
-
Religion
and Communism in Vietnam, 1975-1992
-
The official
policy of repression in the Socialist Republic of
Vietnam 1982.
Vietnam's official press commentaries on the issue of human
rights and political
repression.
-
Cultur
e
and Revolution Official policy of repression: Part II. On
the campaign to
wipe out "reactionary and decadent" culture in the South; a
campaign that
eventually failed.
-
Vietnamese
Communist Party Statute Promulgated
-
Vietnam:
Tran Duc Luong Orders Tighter Security
-
State
Department Report on Human Rights Practices in Vietnam
for
1997. The annual State Department report, released on Jan.
30,
1998.
-
Re-e
ducation camps in Vietnam. Written in
1982.