(translation by Democracy for Vietnam / Montreal)

The following excerpts are from one of the best works in Vietnam after 1975. Among books written about prison life all around the world, especially in the Vietnam Communist regime, this book, "A TALE OF THE YEAR 2000," is considered the most accurate report on the prisoners and on the true images of the so called "cai tao" system, an exact copy of the Chinese "lao-kai."

On July 1, 2001, the author Bui Ngoc Tan was awarded the Hellman/Hammett prize of the international Human Rights Watch for his courage and his contribution to the struggle for human rights in several books, the top of them is A Tale of the Year 2000.

Another dissident also was awarded the prize is retired Colonel Pham Que Duong of the North Vietnam Communist Army for his brave appeal of Democracy in Vietnam. He turned in his party member's card to show his protest against the regime.

"The Tale of the Year 2000" by Bui Ngoc Tac was banned in March 2000 by the ministry of culture and information in Hanoi. The ministry ordered its "banning, seizure and destruction." The book was first brought out in February 2000.

The 600-page novel tells the story of Tuan, a north Vietnamese journalist, who is unfairly jailed and banned from publishing. "The description of the prison camps and the accounts of police humiliation and harrassment are testimony to the degrading conditions experienced by thousands of political prisoners in Vietnam for more than 40 years," said the Reporters Sans Frontiers, an organization for Freedom of the Press.

Some of the banned extracts have been published in French and English jointly by Reporters Sans Frontiers and by the Association for Democracy in Vietnam (Montreal),

Because we could not translate the entire book, only some typical parts of it in English are posted on this website, courtesy of Democracy of Vietnam, a Vietnamese anti-Communist organization in the overseas Vietnamese community.

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and his book « A Tale of Year 2000 »

• Reporter and author of books, essays, short stories.
• 5 years of imprisonment without trial (1968 –1973)
• Prohibited to write and publish for 20 years ( 1973 – 1993)
• Confiscation and destruction of his book « A Tale of Year 2000 » on 16^th March 2000 by the Culture and Information Ministry ( Decree 395 QDBVHTT)

Bui ngoc Tan was born in 1934, in Hai Phong city, Northern Vietnam.

He was a reporter in the North-Vietnam Army, fighting the French colonization.

In 1954, he started writing essays and newspaper articles for the newspaper Tien Phong(Hanoi) and Hai Phong Kien Thiet (Hai Phong).

In 1968, Bui Ngoc Tan was arrested and imprisoned for 5 years without trial, reportedly because he had a few friends among people who were involved in a political movement called « Revisionist movement against the Vietnamese Communist Party »

Out of jail in 1973, Bui Ngoc Tan was victim of harassment and discrimination for 20 years (1973 to 1993). Security officials often searched his home and confiscated thousands of pages of manuscript of novels.

The next book was published in 1995 : « Mot thoi de mat »(A lost time).

In 1996, 2 books were published «  Nhung nguoi rach viec »( The disturbing people) and « Mot ngay dai dang dang »( A long long day). These books were collections of novels and short stories.

Since 1990, he started to write his book « A Tale of Year 2000» ,describing the conditions of prisoners in Vietnamese goulags and the state of slavery in which Vietnamese citizens have been kept by the Communist regime. This book is not only his memoir, reporting his own experience in labour camps through 5 years of imprisonment and the hardship of the years following the detention, but it is also the stories of a dozen of other broken lives from all layers of the society.

Only 10 years later, in February 2000, did he try to publish his book entitled « Chuyen ke nam 2000 » (A Tale of Year 2000). But the book was seized and destroyed by the Vietnamese authorities on March 16^th, 2000. Bui Ngoc Tan and the employee Doan Lam Luyen closely involved in the publication were subjected to security interrogations. Luyen was dismissed from her occupation at the publication office «Thanh Nien» in Ho Chi Minh city.

Thanks to the internet, a copy of his book got to the overseas Vietnamese community, in April 2000.

Honorary member of PEN Canada since July 2000.

His banned book «Chuyen ke nam 2000» was translated into English and French by Democracy for Vietnam / Montreal.

« A Tale of Year 2000» not only is the master piece of Bui Ngoc Tan’s writings, but also has an outstanding place among Vietnamese literature, because this is the story of life-long experience of one person and of many people whose lives have been smashed, but who still have trust in faithfulness, compassion, love, human dignity and humanity.

By trying to publish « A Tale of Year 2000 », Bui Ngoc Tan has shown courage and determination to stand with other human rights defenders in Vietnam who have been the targets of official repression for the last 50 years. Nobody can tell what would happen to Bui Ngoc Tan without pressure from the international community.

Bui Ngoc Tan has started to write a new book which will be a collection of short stories, in spite of the ban of his book « A tale of Year 2000 ».

February 2001

Democracy for Vietnam / Montreal.

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introduced by BUI TIN

On 16 March 2000, the Minister of Culture and Information, Nguyen Khoa Diem who is also general secretary of the Vietnamese Writers' Association, ordered "the banning, seizure and destruction" of a literary work published in February of the same year, which had aroused much interest among the population. The book is a novel entitled "A Tale of Year 2000", of more than 800 pages, by writer and journalist Bui Ngoc Tân.

The press immediately published this ministerial circular and the police, particularly the so-called "cultural police", began tracking it down in order to recover the two thousands copies of this novel all over the country.

Bui Ngoc Tân is my friend. He was a soldier, officer and journalist in the resistance. He was born in Hai Phong in 1934. In 1968, he was arrested during the ludicrous trial of "the anti-party revisionists for spying activities for the benefit of foreigners" (reference to the USSR) and sent to a concentration camp, without trial for five years.

The novel which has just been published is a personal story on his years of detention that Bui Ngoc Tân has taken more than twenty years to tell. He recounts the miserable lives of prisoners harassed night and day by fear, hunger and a lack of hope, but also attests to the untameable imagination of a man ever free, despite his dreadful internment. In his dreams, he sees, chats and even lives with his family and his closest friends.

Bui Ngoc Tân almost gave up his work. After his release from jail in 1973, under constant police surveillance, he was a victim of a police operation. Policemen searched his flat and confiscated all his personal documents and literary manuscripts, including his personal diary of more than one thousand pages on India paper in a really fine writing, which constituted the substance of this novel. It took more than ten years and extraordinary efforts by this man, already tested to the limit, to recall and to reconstitute his work. Without a doubt it is the most important work of this talented author.

In application of the press law which was amended in May 1999, disciplinary measures were taken by the Hochiminh Communist Youth leaders against the publishing house Tuôi Tre (Youth) under its control, for a "lack of vigilance regarding a book qualified as dangerous, reactionary and defamatory as regards the regime".

According to my friends in Hanoi, in April 2000 it was possible to buy the book on the black market at a negotiated price. Eight hundred copies were reportedly sold. In these times of reform (Doi Moi), certain close relations of the cultural police could even help one, discretely, to get it.

My friends in Moscow whisper on the phone: here we received from Saigon some copies of Bui Ngoc Tân 's book. The unabridged text will be published on the Internet.

The translators that took on the challenge of translating this work (A tale of Year 2000) by Bui Ngoc Tan into French and English simply tried to convey the author’s message to the international community which is working to improve human rights conditions through out the world.

The message contained in the book is a human being’s painful cry on behalf of his compatriots and himself, to demand the right to live and to demand dignity, at the same time to make his government and the whole world understand that peace-loving and talented individuals are being prevented from contributing to their country, because they lack freedom.

We hope that we are not « misrepresenting » the above key theme of the book, but we do not claim to be conveying all the beauty and uniqueness of its style, which we would be unable to do in any case. We took the liberty to make two modifications for technical reasons :

First, the book is a tale, a narrative in which the author tells a story experienced by a third person. He therefore refers to that character as « he ». To avoid confusion in certain cases, we chose to refer to this character by his name, « Tuan ».

Second, this work is not divided into chapters, and we understand the author’s intention in this choice of structure. However, we put titles to the excerpted sections that were tranlated so as to highlight the key ideas specific to the excerpts.

We ask that the author and the readers forgive us for our likely clumsiness and errors in this translation. We hope you realize that we took on this difficult task with the intent to contribute to the defense of the rights of courageous and innocent individuals whose voice is being silenced in their countries.

The protagonist of the book is the journalist Nguyen Van Tuan, detained without trial for 5 years, subjected to forced labour in Vietnamese « reeducation camps ». In jail, he is identified as prisoner No CR 880. Nobody from the authorities can answer his question : « What is my crime ? ». but he is classified as «political prisoner», with indeterminate sentence.

He goes through endless interrogations, threat and physical torture, solitary confinement, humiliation, forced labour while starving or in sickness without medical care. His inmates have the same fates, eventhough they have different backgrounds and come from different layers of the society. (Old Do, Sang, Luong, Giang, Can, Du, Di, Do, Son.....)

Every day, he wishes that the next day would bring the order for his release and therefore he would recover his freedom. But only after he comes back home from jail, he relializes that his life has been destroyed since he was arrested and classified as «political prisoner» or «  dissident writer ».

Out of prison, Nguyen Van Tuan is denied the right to food allowance and to work in state owned enterprises ( There is no private enterprises in Vietnam around the years 1950-1988). Therefore, Tuan’s wife is the only supplier for his family’s needs, but she is subjected to discrimination at work because her husband is a former prisoner. Tuan is writer but no publishers dare accept his writings eventhough there is no official decree prohibiting him from writing.

Tuan’s close friends ( Phuong,Binh, Ban, Mac....), are journalists and writers. They are also subjected to persecution because their writings describe poor realities of the society, or do not praise the official policies.

After 5 years of imprisonment, Tuan lives at home with the feeling that everybody he meets, is a former prisoner, used to be detained in the same labour camp with him. Then Tuan realizes that his freedom is confiscated for ever. Freedom doesn’t exist anywhere, and people who demand freedom may see their life smashed, sooner or later.