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LETTER FROM A DISSIDENT IN VIETNAM
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The media in the Vietnamese community abroad have just received a letter written by a renowned dissident, the Ven. Thich Tue Sy. He is one among many Buddhist monks who were imprisoned by the Vietnam Communist Party authorities for 15 years after a Communist court gave him a death sentence, only to commute the sentence and then released him under international pressure against the trial. Ven. Thich Tue Sy was charged with several counts of acting against the "Socialist regime." He is now Secretary General of the Unified Buddhist Church, an independent church not under the Communist control.
The letter was written in May, 2000 when Venerable Tue Sy and another well-known dissident, Dr. Nguyen Dan Que, were invited by the government of Holland to attend the International Conference for the Development of Vietnam. The writing was intended to be read in the conference, but Hanoi didn't grant them exit permits.
Beginning the letter, Ven. Thich Tue Sy expresses his grateful thanks to world personages and Vietnamese émigrés who actively intervened for his release from the Communist prison. His is grateful especially to the government of Holland for the invitation.
He admits that there are more and more changes that are said to be encouraging, but to what direction (better or worse) is a matter of personal viewpoint. He says that he is not lucky as his compatriots who have been living in freedom in foreign countries for 15 or 20 years, now coming back to see in Vietnam new five-star hotels serving high ranking Communists and foreigners, where people of the high society with privileges from political conditions are pompously welcomed.
He says he was "lucky" to live for a very long time together with those regarded as "dregs of society." It was from those "dregs" that he was witnessing changes within the prison camps, which reflect "big changes in the nation." He says, "People only need to observe trash dumped on the back yard to know what are consumed in the front yard."
Tue Sy raises a question: "This land has soaked up much blood of generations of our forefathers and friends. Has that blood accumulated into such a pile of trash which is terribly growing bigger and bigger every day?"
"Vietnam is now a huge pile of garbage," he says, also noting that it is not only an idea of his, but of the top leader of the Communist Party as well. He stresses that the idea covers all aspects of life: culture, politics and religions.
According to Tue Sy, "a question must be put to those who still have national self-respect: why a people that is always proud of its four thousand years' culture let its country become a heap of garbage containing all the worst scum of the civilized humankind? From where and by whom?"
The brave monk says that in nearly 15 years in jail, he had to learn all the time to praise the courage of the Communist Party. But to him, "It's not courage, but an attitude of holding the people in contempt, treating the people as guinea pigs in the implementation of an utopian ideology and illusive doctrines."
Tue Sy expresses his wishes that the Communist Party would not conduct any more experiments for its doctrine, or carry out its policy of "great solidarity" as it once did. (He refers to Ho Chi Minh's delusive "Great Solidarity Movement" which got rid of thousands of nationalist patriots in 1946).
"There are big changes indeed, except for one: The Communist Party still considers itself the benefactor of the people, so it has an exclusive power over the fate of the people," Tue Sy goes on. According to the monk, that is a difference between the Communist regime in Vietnam and other notorious tyrannies in history.
Tue Sy says the Communist Party attitude towards the people is also a cause of corruption. The authoritarian, bureaucratic attitude of a benefactor is the nature of the Party and the nutrient for corruption.
He also believes that corruption is the root of other social evils, because it creates them and bring them up, eroding every traditional value and virtue.
To help readers understand a part of the corrupt nature of a regime often claiming that it has no more man exploiting man, Tue Sy cites a true story during last year flash flood in Huong Tho village, Huong Tra district, Thua Thien province.
There was a very poor family, permanent residents at a small boat, which was the only one in the flooded area. More than 80 people were saved from being drowned by the flood.
After the catastrophe, a few government teams came to distribute relief supplies. Other people received little relief, but the poor boat family got nothing from them because they do not have the household registered book. Their extreme poverty forced them to move around the area all the time, without a permanent residence on land to have a registered book.
The grateful villagers requested the local authorities to grant the family the household registered book, but they didn't have 400,000 "dong" to bribe the local officials with. Later, some monks visited the village and helped the family with the required money. The help has been kept secret.
What Tue Sy wants to point out is not corruption but the personality of that poor family. Members of the family have silently suffered the injustice in a respectable manner, and though living in extreme poverty, they still maintain perfect human dignity.
"How many similar cases are there in this country? Those are lives in the backyard of the ruling power, in the shadow of society. If they don't speak out, who knows they are here?
"Because our country is in such a plight, our people have to suffer much sorrow and disgrace. As to the intellects, who earn great respect of the Vietnamese by traditions, the utmost shamefulness is that they are unable to speak out against all indignation and sufferings of the oppressed people."
"In Vietnam today, the pens of ones who may write are bent; those of ones who want to write are broken," Tue Sy comments.
He concludes: "However I am well aware of one thing that is written in history book: True intellects in Vietnam never show cowardice."
The letter is dated May 13, 2000, from Quang Huong Monastery, Saigon, Vietnam.
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